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We on the left are frustrated by jokes about “cancel culture” because, to some extent, we know and agree that our own online existences could be ruined by one faux pas or slip of intrinsic bias in keeping with the system of peer accountability we have intentionally strived to create. Our own ever-present risk of self-destruction and near permanent ostracization, regardless of earnest admission of wrongness or the legitimacy of our apologies, is very much the machine running as designed.

And maybe that should be something we want, in spite of the anxiety it spurs. There is no exile more socialist than one decided by the greater populace sans governing intervention. Is one still “valid” when everyone hates them?

Not sure about all this. I’ve been on both sides of the cancellation matrix—said the wrong thing and had to rightfully fight to regain the trust of friends and peers, but also a leading voice in naming the names of those I believed (and still believe, to some extent) deserved to be outcast. I guess the Internet complicates accountability, is all.

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12/2019 - America in Four Colors and Forty Years: The Improvisatory Jazz Influence of Stuart Davis’ Canon

America through the eyes of an artist takes as many forms as there are mediums, American locales, artists themselves. Consider the works which came out of the Hudson River School: the sweeping landscapes of Asher Durand and Thomas Cole in which dreamy morning sunlight pours over the Catskills, winding river, and technicolored autumn trees below. The Romanticism movement of the mid-19th century gave landscape painting--once considered a “profitable, but lowly, subject for serious artists” [Seiferle, Rebecca. “The Hudson River School Overview.” The Art Story, 2017, www.theartstory.org/movement/hudson-river-school/.]--new life, and the Hudson River School took the responsibility of portraying postcolonial America as beautifully as could be to the forces of the outside world (longer-lived nations), not to mention the very people of America, upon themselves. One could posit that Romantic art of the Hudson River School’s sort serves a manifestation of American optimism, a stereotypical quality assigned to the people of the United States for our tendency to up-and-come, as well as the nation’s (perhaps undeserved) reputation for allowing a haven for those fleeing crisis, war, or mere stagnation. There is an inherent responsibility in portraying America artistically--more so today than ever--and, while the likes of Cole and Durand might’ve sufficed in the 1870s, their peaceful scenes of undeveloped, stolen mountain land certainly wouldn’t cut it today--nor even, as it would appear, in the 1920s. Our focus today remains on the visual identity of American optimism while taking into account the necessary weight one takes on in portraying our nation, warts and all--and one that, through utter abstraction, one early 20th century painter managed to carry. If it wasn’t evident from the title of this piece, that painter was Stuart Davis: a Philadelphian born to two artists in 1894, and an artist whose explicit jazz influence denotes an improvisatory perception of urban America. Slapdash, diverse, rife with inequality, and, somehow, unquestionably beautiful in the limited palates of Davis’ latter artistic career. The following essay will delve into Davis’ body of work from his earliest days as a greenhorn painting mucky portrayals of northeastern city life, lead into his evolution towards a greyish, pastel modernism during the otherwise colorfully-drawn Roaring 20s, and finally conclude with his most famous body of paintings: musical explosions of color that erupt from their canvases, thick sludges of jewel tones that manage to capture America both as it is and as it would ideally be: utterly colorful and harmonious in every sense of the words.

Stuart Davis’ first big career break was in the Armory Show at 100, an exhibition of approximately 1400 pieces at New York City’s 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue. [“About.” The Armory Show at 100, armory.nyhistory.org/about/.] Not initially invited, Davis took advantage of the show’s amendment to the rules that reluctantly allowed artists to submit their work to the Domestic Art Committee for exhibition [Gratta, Eva. “‘The Greatest Single Influence I Have Experienced in My Work’: Stuart Davis and the Armory Show.” The Armory Show at 100, 26 Nov. 2013, armory.nyhistory.org/the-greatest-single-influence-i-have-experienced-in-my-work-stuart-davis-and-the-armory-show/.] and soon found his work hanging alongside the likes of “Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, and Vincent Van Gogh, all together for the very first time” (armory.nyhistory.org). The show was a sensation, and traveled from New York to Chicago and Boston, taking with it acclaim and controversy alike. Below is one of Davis’ paintings from the exhibition, Babe la Tour, which displays his early modernist style as taught by Robert Henri, the young artist’s instructor in the Ashcan School of Art (a movement primarily focused on scenes of poverty in urban New York City environments).

[Stuart Davis (American, 1892–1964), Babe La Tour, 1912. Watercolor and pencil on paper, 15 × 11 in. (38.0 × 28.0 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Henry H. Ploch] Note the grave, drastic shadows in what appears to be a scene of festivity; the Ashcan School asked of its artists a certain grit and unapologeticism, evidently infusing Davis’ early work with the socio-political honesty his whole body of paintings would come to be known for in spite of their abstraction. And accounts of the young man’s personal life further prove Davis’ awareness of New York City’s impoverished, persecuted underbelly--in a personal narrative first published in Donna Cassidy’s Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art [Cassidy, Donna. Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art, 1910-1940. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.], Davis recounts the wonder and inspiration he felt in the music of barside pianists in majority-black neighborhood bars in Newark:

“These saloons catered to the poorest Negroes, and outside of beer, a favorite drink was a glass of gin with a cherry in it which sold for five cents.  The pianists were unpaid, playing for love or art alone. In one place, the piano was covered on top and sides with barbed wire to discourage lounging and leaning on it, and give the performer more scope while at work.  But the big point with us was that in all of these places you could hear the blues, or tin-pan alley tunes turned into real music, for the cost of a five cent beer (Cassidy 1997).”

This particular account supposedly came from Davis in 1912, a mere year prior to his first major exhibition in the Armory Show at 100. It is indicative of his admiration for improvisatory works, which would come into play in full swing at the most famed point in the young artist’s career. Alongside his penchant and love for frequenting black jazz clubs in Jersey, Davis called the Armory Show the “single greatest single influence I have experienced in my work,” unsurprisingly. [John James Sweeney, Stuart Davis (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1945), 9-10.] Surrounded by paintings exploding with the cubist sensibilities Davis would later utilize, the young artist’s work moving into the 1920s took on flatter compositions, abandoning Aschan entirely for an entirely new way of portraying the same bared urban realism.

With the 1920s came the so-called Jazz Age and its accompanying hedonism and indulgence on the part of young, wealthy white Americans who had weathered and financially benefited from the conclusion of World War I. Naturally, wage inequality was roaring as bright and loudly as the rest of American culture in the 1920’s, with astronomical economic difference between the nation’s wealthiest one percent and essentially everybody else. As it happens, America today has officially matched the abysmally high rate of wage inequality it held in the 1920s--with that aforementioned one percent holding about twenty percent of all national income--and just in time for the 2020s, too. Artists of the time were caught up in the portrayal of wealth and exuberance in the colorful styles of Art Nouveau and, closely following, Art Deco, and writers relished in hyper-descriptive, lavish party scenes that nodded only occasionally to the suffering poor (here’s looking at you, Fitzgerald). Stuart Davis, however, seemed to miss that rollicking boat entirely. Davis’ paintings of the early to mid-1920s focus on American domesticity and consumerism, taking on grim palettes of greyish-blue pastels that do not glorify the products portray so much as ground them in a depressing, branded reality.

[Stuart Davis (American, 1892–1964), Odol, 1921. Museum of Modern Art.]

[Stuart Davis (American, 1892--1964), Lucky Strike, 1921. Museum of Modern Art.]

Additionally, Davis briefly experimented with collage in the 1920s, as can be seen in the piece on the right, Lucky Strike. Already we can see a stark difference between these paintings and the previously-listed Davis work, Babe la Tour. Davis began to experiment with shape and dimension in the 1920s, and turned to color blocking as opposed to more realistic renderings. Graphic design was a particular fixation of the artist’s during the Jazz Age, an interest that clearly benefited from the consumerist ideologies of the time. Improvisatory nonsensicality, likely in a page taken from Davis’ jazz influence, appears in the shapes shown in both paintings, a mix of round, organic forms and sharp geometry. Nonetheless, everything in Davis’ body of work in the 1920s looks boxed in--narrow, enclosed within its own canvas and gloomy colors. In parallel, mainstream black jazz at the time kept improvisation to something of a minimum, with improvised solos appearing in otherwise consistent, composed pieces (such as in the performances of Louis Armstrong and his bands). Though the 1920s were a time of excitement and experimentation for most white creators in America, Davis’ body of work during the era is still considered underwhelming in contrast with the pieces he would produce in the 1930s and beyond. In spite of Davis’ early career success, the Great Depression throughout the 1930s was a difficult period for the artist, as it was for many others like him. Davis was amongst the many applicants to the Federal Art Project, one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal legislations during the Depression. As reported by the Library of Congress:

“The Federal Art Project (FAP) was created in 1935 to provide work relief for artists in various media--painters, sculptors, muralists and graphic artists, with various levels of experience. Holger Cahill, a curator and fine and folk art expert, was appointed director of the program. As with the other Federal cultural projects of the time, the program sought to bring art and artists into the everyday life of communities throughout the United States, through community art centers, exhibitions and classes” [“New Deal Programs: Selected Library of Congress Resources.” Federal Art Project: New Deal Web Guide (Virtual Programs & Services, Library of Congress), 2015, www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/newdeal/fap.html.].

The 1930s were a time of great political activity for the young artist, which may explain why his works from this era are strangely difficult to track down online. “Seeing no contradiction between patriotism and radical politics,” New Yorker writer Peter Schjeldal says, “throughout the nineteen-thirties Davis all but set aside studio work, dismissing leftist demands for proletarian themes in art, to engage in labor-organizing activism.” [Full citation lost.] In his all-powerful American optimism, Davis practically abandoned painting altogether to fight fascism and eventually become the chairman of the American Artists’ Congress, an organization founded by the American Communist Party to do just that on a widespread scale. There is an inherent improvisatory tilt to the tale of a painter altogether forgoing his passion in order to properly dedicate himself to human rights in the nation he loved, and Davis’ actions are indicative of the fierceness with which he exuded his American optimism. Optimism and patriotism do not, after all consist of blind acceptance of the flaws and discriminatory failings of one’s country--it is doubtful Davis would have been such an outspoken proponent of underground jazz otherwize--but rather a willingness to fight back and oppose persecution, which Davis readily did far beyond merely creating revolutionary, jazz-inspired works. For the most part, it would appear the paintings Davis did create were simplistic and scaled down, as opposed to the massive, buttery canvases of his later career. Below is one of the few accessible works from the midst of Davis’ hyper-political stint during the Great Depression, entitled Artists Against War and Fascism.

[Stuart Davis (American, 1892–1964), Artists Against War and Fascism, 1936.]

With washed-out color blocking and a simplistic composition, it is evident that Davis had more pressing matters than painting on his mind when he created this piece.

One can see Davis’ paintings exploding into full color in the 1940s following the Great Depression. Perhaps this is more indicative of Davis’ token American optimism than any of the artist’s previous eras within the canon of his paintings: immediately after the grimmest hour of the American economy, not to mention a rise in fascist ideologies which Davis himself fought alongside the American Communist Party, Davis still drew directly from both the musical inspiration and ideology behind improvisatory jazz, swing, and the big band music that was making its mainstream debut at the time. According to music journalist and jazz performer Ben Sidran:

“For the whole of his creative life, Davis would disdain mere abstraction in art and prefer to think of his work as having “a realism that every man on the street has the potential to see.  But in order to see, would have to see it in himself first. Would have to give value to those qualities which an artist gives...to whatever is the artist in him.”  And, when pressed on the subject, he referred to this quality of being ‘able to see’ as being ‘hip’, a term he said he learned ‘in the jazz bars and saloons’” [Sidran, Ben. “The Jazz of Stuart Davis.” bensidran.com, 2016, bensidran.com/writing/the-jazz-of-stuart-davis.].

The implication here is that Davis’ view of the world around him is, in a way, improvisatory--by changing his perspective of the impoverished cityscapes by which he was surrounded, Davis created unique paintings from pre-existing setpieces. Consider the comparison below between pieces from 1932, 1939, and 1940, respectively:

[Stuart Davis (American, 1892–1964), Composition No. 4, 1932. Museum of Modern Art. ]

[Stuart Davis (American, 1892–1964), Shapes of Landscape Space (Landscape Space No. 4), 1939. Museum of Modern Art. ]

[Stuart Davis (American, 1892–1964), Report from Rockport, 1940. Metropolitan Museum of Art.]

The third painting, Report from Rockport, is one of the earlier examples of Davis’ power for employing an ensemble of colors, each taking on nonsensical shapes and forms all while tiny details--such as the words “garage” and “Seine”--place the piece in a surreal, yet familiar reality. Improvisation in jazz music had exploded into the public eye with the ever-controversial bebop musical movement: “impossible to dance to, the tempos were extremely fast, and rhythmical, melodic and harmonic contents were unpredictable for the untrained ear.” [Poe, Alexander. “Jazz Improvisation Evolution: A History of Jazz by Ear.” Musical U, 3 Mar. 2017, www.musical-u.com/learn/jazz-improvisation-evolution-history-of-jazz-by-ear/.] Just as jazz music was becoming seemingly crowded and hyper-rhythmic, Davis’ works proudly did the same, instantly taking place at the top of the artist’s most respected and sought-after stylistic pieces. Following the 1940s, Davis only delved deeper into the use of eye-catching color and thick, rich texture, upscaling his paintings and producing visual ensembles in the form of his palettes.

Stuart Davis’ emphasis on American optimism and activist patriotism--overwhelming to the extent that the artist practically quit his work painting during the 1930s to oppose fascism out on the streets--intertwine directly with his lifelong love for improvisational jazz in all its movements. Davis’ most polished works exude improvisatory expertise and flair, reigning in daring colors by way of limited palettes, as if to keep in key. But the artist’s improvisatory nature did not end with art--as an example to modern American artists now and forever, Davis prioritized action over all, even if it meant leaving behind his already-revolutionary painting career for a time. And though the man’s paintings portray urban America as an idealistic place while never sacrificing realism (even through abstraction), Davis’ works never revealed his tumultuous struggle with alcoholism and the depression he faced after the death of his first wife (the cause of death being a botched abortion). Some may call this a “forced sunniness,” but I believe it is yet another testament to Davis’ dedication to the greater issues plaguing America, even if that dedication meant sacrificing personal wellbeing. In the end, Davis died at home alongside his second wife and their son, George Earl, who was named after jazz musicians George Wettling and Earl Hines. Closing work for the evening on his final piece--The Mellow Pad, forever unfinished and currently impossible to find online--Davis painstakingly lettered the word “FIN” on his massive canvas before retiring to bed, where he would die of a stroke the following morning.

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12/2019 - Unclean Cuisine: Mary Douglas, Richard Wilks, and Food Matter Out of Place

Notions of uncleanliness, historically, serve as weapons of socio-political powers to stifle oppressed minorities (particularly on the basis of race); long have black, brown, and yellow been considered the colors of death, evil, disease, and pallor. Mary Douglas led the anthropological charge in defining dirt and filth in 1966’s Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo [Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: an Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.], eventually settling on her notorious assertion that dirt is merely “matter out of place”--but an exploration of the practical (and socio-political) applications of Douglas’ claim contextualizes what initially appears simplistic and abstract. Anthropological authors Bettina Stoetzer and Laurie Denyer Willis, for example, both cite Douglas’ “matter out of place” theory in “Ruderal Ecologies: Rethinking Nature, Migration, and the Urban Landscape in Berlin” [Stoetzer, Bettina. “Ruderal Ecologies: Rethinking Nature, Migration, and the Urban Landscape in Berlin.” Cultural Anthropology, vol. 33, no. 2, 2018, pp. 295–323., doi:10.14506/ca33.2.09.] and “It Smells Like a Thousand Angels Marching’: The Salvific Sensorium in Rio de Janeiro’s Western Subùrbios,” [Willis, Laurie Denyer. “‘It Smells Like a Thousand Angels Marching’: The Salvific Sensorium in Rio De Janeiro’s Western Subúrbios.” Cultural Anthropology, vol. 33, no. 2, 2018, pp. 324–348.] respectively. Both articles--explorations of oppressed classes making the most of their crippling poverty in Berlin and Rio de Janeiro--reveal that the social definitions of matter in place duly define matter out of place within hegemonic societies, justifying racial prejudice by way of widespread ideals of cleanliness. But how does this apply in an everyday sphere? How do racist ideologies centered around filth and belonging go so commonly unchecked? I posit the following: food. With a specific focus on the politics of food as charted by Richard Wilks, I shall explore specific instances in the works of Bettina Stoetzer, Laurie Denyer Willis, and, of course, Mary Douglas, ideally uncovering racist ideologies which quietly infect society by way of disrespect towards minority group cuisine.

Bettina Stoetzer’s “Ruderal Ecologies: Rethinking Nature, Migration, and the Urban Landscape in Berlin” analyzes methods of adaptation with which Turkish immigrants in Berlin coped with social rejection during and after the era of the Berlin wall in conjunction with “ruderal ecologies,” which Stoetzer states “grow in the inhospitable environments created by war and exclusion; they emerge by chance and entail illegal border crossings—often unnoticed in ethnographies of a city that tend to focus on people, buildings, institutions, or infrastructure” (Stoetzer 308). Stoetzer implies that such ruderal ecologies as plant life amongst rubble is microcosmic of the Turkish populace in an unwelcoming Berlin, and describes one cultural scapegoat as representative of Turkish oppression: the wilde Griller. The term comes from one of Stoetzer’s earlier works, “‘Wild Barbecuing’: Urban Citizenship and the Politics of Transnationality in Berlin’s Tiergarten.” [Stoetzer, Bettina. “‘Wild Barbecuing’: Urban Citizenship and the Politics of Transnationality in Berlin’s Tiergarten.” Transnationalism and the German City, 2014, pp. 73–86., doi:10.1057/9781137390172_5.] Targeted for the supposed environmental pollution caused by grill smoke, Berlin was alight with controversy over the picnicking pastime throughout the early 2000s.

“Local and national media have painted a gloomy picture of the capital’s so-called underclass problem, depicting scenes of wild, unemployed barbecuers--a favorite pastime among many Middle Eastern immigrants--polluting Berlin’s green lungs with smoke and garbage. Both the bodies of people of color and their environments, as well as the smoke, meat, and litter they supposedly produce, figure as ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas 2002, 44) in these scenarios. Migrants become almost animal-like, in need of containment. These tropes of wilderness are more than metaphorical; they inform public policies such as EU-based integration projects that attempt to undo racial segregation, poverty, and urban decay” (Stoetzer 2018, 306).

Stoetzer supposes deeper meaning may be at play, and even references Mary Douglas once in each piece in doing so. She claims that “barbecuing is attached with racial meanings—it is, to invoke Hobsbawm, an ‘invented tradition’ that marks territories and bodies and renegotiates urban citizenship across borders” and cites the significance of German perceptions of “bodies and practices ‘out of place’”--that is, Turkish Berliners and the occupation of public barbecuing (Stoetzer 2014, 74). If Stoetzer’s theory does not convince on its own, the present-day legislature on grilling in Berlin speaks volumes: “City measures have especially targeted Turkish immigrants,” Stoetzer says. “Today, barbecuing is outlawed in most of Berlin’s parks—especially in immigrant neighborhoods” (Stoetzer 2014, 73). Turning to another anthropologist’s writing may clarify the true damage done by the city of Berlin in stifling Turkish food culture--Richard Wilk writes on pride in local food (and hegemonic insults to it) in the eighth chapter of Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists. [“Migrants, Tourists, and New Belizean Cuisine.” Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists, by Richard R. Wilk, Berg, 2007, pp. 155–190.] He tells the story of the Queen of England’s visit to Belize in 1985, during a particularly significant era of national pride thanks to the growing accessibility of television and, in turn, televised sports (namely the Chicago Cubs, with whom the Belizean people were particularly enamored).

“A banquet was held for the Queen at the residence of the British High Commissioner in Belmopan. The commissioner’s cook, Aurora Mendez, prepared a selection of Belizean delicacies, including a main course of stuffed, roasted gibnut. The Queen… made no particular remark about the food except to praise the cook. The story would have ended there, but for the royal-entranced British tabloid press. The following day The Sun and other London papers carried outraged headlines, on the theme of ‘Queen Served Rat by Savages.’ The stories accused Belizean cooks of conspiring to slip a disgusting rat onto the royal plate, blaming ignorance and stupidity (with racial connotations), or a deliberate attempt to insult the government” (Wilk 167-168).

Though public opinion salvaged the reputation of Belizean cuisine, and the aforementioned headlines were widely considered “arrogant and racist,” the fact of food as an easy target for discriminatory rhetoric still stands (Wilk 168). Disrespect in the form of culinary criticism remained strong in the decades following the royal rat incident, though no publications were as outrightly malicious as the British tabloids mentioned above. Wilk opens his chapter on tourism and cuisine with just that--a selection of quotations from Belizean tourism guide books published by Western writers. From Stacy Ritz--“Belize is not known for its culinary achievements. In fact, its restaurants suffer a dismal reputation among travelers” [Ritz, Stacy. The New Key to Belize. Ulysses Press, 1998.]--to Alex Bradbury--“No one goes to Belize for the food, and a Belizean cookbook… will be the work of an overzealous patriot rather than a gourmet” [Bradbury, Alex, and Peter Hutchison. Belize: the Bradt Travel Guide. Bradt Publications, 2000.]--to Richard Mahler and Steele Wotkyns--“There are relatively few distinctive Belizean dishes, which is why you’ve probably never heard of any” [Mahler, Richard, et al. Belize: a Natural Destination. J. Muir Publications, 1995.]--contemptuous, xenophobic self-superiority reads clear as day in what are otherwise innocent travel guides (Ritz, 64; Bradbury, 64; Mahler and Wotkyns, 342). Disrespecting the entirety of a culture’s cuisine in the name of travel reporting harkens back to the supposed objectivity of evolutionary anthropology, which justifies racism and white supremacy by ranking cultures by their civility and level of development, the lowest of which is “savage.” To return to Stoetzer--in the end, the suspicion that Turkish barbecuers were “polluting Berlin’s green lungs with smoke and garbage” is merely another instance of oppression in the form of culinary particularity, and in no way unique, however damaging and indicative of racist ideology under the surface. The emphasis on smell in the ban on wilde Grillers is noteworthy--and no anthropological writer knows smell and its uses in discrimination better than Laurie Denyer Willis, the focus of our next case.

Laurie Denyer Willis defines the titular “salvific sensorium in “It Smells Like a Thousand Angels Marching’: The Salvific Sensorium in Rio de Janeiro’s Western Subùrbios” as “a kind of sensed space and territory that exists by engaging the senses with a divine alterity that reconfigures worth and temporal binds”--in short, an imagined space of higher meaning and power as assigned to sensory input notably smells in Willis’ work (Willis 326). But divinity isn’t the only metaphysical thing Willis cites as being brought about by foreign fragrance--racism and discrimination, too, are a focus of this anthropologist’s study in impoverished Rio de Janeiro. A short ways into “It Smells Like a Thousand Angels Marching,” Willis diverts from Milene, an entrepreneur selling homemade cleaning solution and the focus of the story, to discuss the woman’s friend and neighbor, Monica. Monica “had gone to the south zone of Rio for the day to ‘audition’ as a faxineira, a concontracted temporary day cleaner, in an elite, gated house,” Willis explains, and the audition it an unexpected roadblock halfway through the shift.

“After a morning of cleaning, she explains, she had taken a break to eat her lunch. When the woman who she was cleaning for found Monica sitting with her lunch in the house’s domestic quarters, she acted visibly nauseated and dramatically waved Monica out of the house like one might wave away a stench. She then berated Monica, insisting that Monica leave the house to eat her meals, not sit down anywhere in the woman’s home, and not bring her food into the woman’s kitchen… This request had struck her as crazy. With nowhere to go during her lunch break--and not wanting to eat while walking the streets--Monica had just packed up her things and started back home without informing the woman or collecting her half-day of pay” (Willis 331).

Willis goes on to discuss the generally interconnected nature between race and smell--specifically, smell used as a basis for racism--but the prominence of food as a catalyst for discrimination in Monica’s story befits our earlier analysis of the Turkish barbecuers in Berlin and the tabloid reports of the Queen of England’s trip to a Belizean feast. Culinary unfamiliarity, once again, is used here as a vehicle for racist and discriminatory rhetoric; the wealthy woman in Monica’s story belittles her through disgust at the smell of her lunch in a dehumanizing display of gastronomic xenophobia. In all likelihood, the food this nameless woman so blatantly disrespected was Afro-Brazilian, a subsidiary cuisine found in Brazil as a result of West African slaves’ cooking methods mixing with the ingredients of both the indigenous Brazilians and their Portuguese colonizers. [ya Salaam, Kalamu. “Food: The African Origins of Brazilian Cuisine.” NeoGriot, 26 May 2014, kalamu.com/neogriot/2014/06/07/food-the-african-origins-of-brazilian-cuisine/.] West African cooking features the pervasive use of dendê (palm oil), while the coastal locale in Rio provides an ample market of seafood, and Portuguese influence means “chiles, tomatoes, peanuts, and cassava” feature prominently (ya Salaam 2014) in many dishes. As such, Afro-Brazilian cuisine is indeed fragrant--and thus an easy target for the racism of smell that Willis defines. “Smell… often delineates difference. As Constance Classen (1992) argues, smell is a particularly insidious way to catalogue the imposed boundaries of race, class, and morality,” Willis says. And, she notes, “Brazil is not unique in this way” (Willis 332). Everywhere immediate discrimination can be found, so too can one easily identify a contempt for ethnic food. Returning to Richard Wilk, I readdress the third of Wilk’s exemplifying quotations from unintentionally discriminatory Belizean tourism guidebooks. “There are relatively few distinctive Belizean dishes,” Mahler and Wotkyns warn their readers, “which is why you’ve probably never heard of any.” There is a spectacular lack of self-awareness in commentary that denotes cultural identity is far to find in modern, mixed cuisine. The fact of the matter is that colonialism, mass migration, and present-day interconnectivity alike blur the lines between ethnic diets. American food draws unapologetically from its immigrant populations, fostering a culture of fast food that blends appropriated indigenous American ingredients with European imports, including Jewish and German diets--all of which are, in and of themselves, amalgams. Belizean cuisine is much the same. Due to its position as a reasonably minute strip of Central American coastline, shoved up against the Caribbean Sea by the hulking borders of Mexico and Guatemala, Belize was fated to absorb and influence the cuisine of its neighbors--and none of this is to mention colonial impact. As such, “Mestizo, Garifuna, Creole and Mayan food are still identifiable” in the Belizean diet, “but they also merge into each other” (Wilk 162). If food is microcosmic of the cultural histories it represents, Belizean lore is nowhere better described than in the pages of a cookbook. Per Wilk’s description:

“Alongside typical Creole dishes like stewed conch with dumplings and escabeche, there are recipes for lobster thermidor, Swedish casserole, reek moussaka and Korean bulgogi. There is even an American cream of mushroom soup and tuna dish, called ‘Cream of the Sea,’ which would be hard to imagine on a rural or working-class Belizean table. The book does tell you how to stew an iguana and stuff a gibnut, but the civilized foreign food numerically drowns out the local message” (Wilk 164).

Afro-Brazilian cuisine is much the same: a pinch of indigeneity, a dash of slavery, a few heaping cups of colonialism bind, for better or for worse, to create an utterly distinctive (and astoundingly delicious), blended diet which represents the tenacity of its modern-day cooks. And it doesn’t take much to recognize why both Belizean and Afro-Brazilian cuisines are subject to so much unnecessary, discriminatory commentary. Cuisines defined by their heterogeneity generally belong to oppressed peoples; colonialism, slavery, and ethnic diversity make singularity impossible otherwise. Food is indeed microcosmic of the nations or cultures it represents, and, unfortunately, the cuisines of groups of color are just as subject to racist rhetoric as the cooks who prepare them.

When studied alongside Richard Wilk’s comprehensive and distinctly food-focused Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists, certain brief and essentially interjectory components of Bettina Stoetzer and Laurie Denyer Willis’ respective articles on the wider subjects of cleanliness and the adaptations of the oppressed develop a stark and distinctive character of their own. Food is something of a magnet in anthropological writing, I’ve found--given enough space, it becomes the center of an otherwise irrelevant piece. Gastronomy is simply too seminal to human culture and development to be foregone entirely, hence the deeper potential of Stoetzer and Willis’ mentions of it when applied to another anthropologist’s culinary body of work. If cuisine is microcosmic of culture, then Mary Douglas’ theory of “matter out of place” is macrocosmic, an all-encompassing and vague enormity in anthropological study that can be narrowed down to any cultural subject matter, be it food or, even more unfortunately, human lives. “Cleanliness” and hygiene in food preparation hold as much potential for microaggression as questioning the cleanliness of a person or body of people; such subtle racism pervades every aspect of Western food culture, even down to one’s inherent suspicion of, say, the Chinese buffet at a roadside strip mall while the McDonalds gets off scot-free. If cultural cuisine is microcosm, then cultural cuisine is pride incarnate--and expressing disgust at that is as telling as any other act of discriminatory hate can be.

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10/2019 - The Privilege of Craving: Symbolic Meals, Commodified Labor, and National Tastes

In many ways, the iconography of postcolonial Western society centers wholeheartedly around sweets. A steaming apple pie with a latticed crust pairs perfectly against the summery backdrop of the star-spangled banner; British spreads aren’t complete without shingled biscuits on a porcelain tray beside the accompanying copper-colored tea. Over the English Channel, French patisseries tout delicate concoctions of choux pastry, technicolored ganache, and berries glazed with syrup--and further south, sticky, chocolatey brigadeiros appear in droves alongside the guests at any given Brazilian festivity. Sidney W. Mintz understands and embraces the inherent saccharine intertwine of sweets and national pride, nowhere better evidenced than in the very title of his book in question: Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. [1. Food, Sociality, and Sugar.” Sweetness and Power, by Sidney W. Mintz, Penguin Books, 1963, pp. 3–18.] In comparison with alternative anthropological theories on cultural signifiers of power and inequality by William Robertson Smith, Claude Levi-Strauss, Karl Marx, Gregory Morton, and Yuka Suzuki, I believe that Mintz’s account serves a unique and insightful look into unquestioned cultural standards which disguise both historical atrocities and ethnocentric methods of dehumanization which still persist today.

On the subject of the anthropological significance of food, Mintz writes: “Ingestion and tastes… carry an enormous affective load. What we like, what we eat, how we eat it, and how we feel about it are phenomenologically interrelated matters; together, they speak eloquently to the question of how we perceive ourselves in relation to others” (Mintz 4). At the risk of presenting a slightly more fanciful proposal (if not a distinctly Geertzian one), I would venture to say that Mintz’s claims support a notion that the culinary subculture in any given social group can be viewed as microcosmic of their greater values as a society. Mintz’s citation from Robertson Smith’s “The Original Significance of Animal Sacrifice,” a lecture from his series on the Semetic religions [“Lecture VIII: The Original Significance of Animal Sacrifice.” Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, by William Robertson Smith, Black, 1923, pp. 269–312.], supports this microcosmic claim--and offers another component to the anthropological discussion of power: that which exists between gods and men. Specifically referencing the sacrificial meal in which a god would theoretically partake, Smith writes that “the very act of eating and drinking with a man was a symbol and a confirmation of fellowship and mutual social obligations”--by sharing in the social act of consumption, mankind commune with significantly higher powers as if to concur that their interests are, if not the same, at least similar as far as their mutual goodwill stretches (Smith 269). And what of the aforementioned symbol? If Mintz represents the humblest stage of interrelational culinary study, and Smith with his discussion of sacrificial meals after that, Claude Levi-Strauss leans even more dramatically towards theological power in his analysis of symbolism in rite and ritual, “The Effectiveness of Symbols” from Structural Anthropology. [“Chapter X: The Effectiveness of Symbols.” Structural Anthropology, by Lévi-Strauss Claude, Basic, 1963, pp. 186–205.] In a detailed account of a Cuna Indian childbirthing ritual, Levi-Strauss paints a picture of the psychological power a shaman holds over his patient through symbolic ritual involving multicolored beads, bones, and jewelry, eventually coming to the conclusion that “the shamanistic cure lies on the borderline between our contemporary physical medicine and such psychological therapies as psychoanalysis”--that the symbolism of his cure is a matter of “provoking an experience” (Levi-Strauss 198). Drawing back to Smith, and after him, Mintz, I believe Levi-Strauss’ theory of symbol applies just as readily to the analysis of cultural tastes as a reflection of power, pride, and control. As we have gleaned from Smith’s account, gastronomy is as entwined in symbolic experience as it is actual consumption--and to that end, holds incomparable power in hegemonic rule. “[A person’s] food preferences are close to the center of their self definition,” Mintz explains. “People who eat strikingly different foods or similar foods in different ways are thought to be strikingly different, sometimes even less human” (Mintz 3). Thanks to the symbolic nature of food throughout several (if not all) national histories, we can glean the specific importance of edible luxuries during and after the colonial era--and, in the language of Mintz’s fellow analysts, their treatment as commodities mandatory to daily life.

Mintz supplies us with brief but comprehensive physiological evidence for the base human attraction towards sweetness, fostered in part by our fruit- and honey-foraging mammalian ancestors, milk diets in infancy, and socio-cultural interventions such as the distinctly American act of “interval eating”--that is to say, snacking (Mintz 18). The result of mankind’s inherent like for chemical sugars, Mintz informs us, was a fast-track towards obsession following the European “discovery” of cane sugar/sucrose:

“By 1650, in England the nobility and the wealthy had become inveterate sugar eaters, and sugar figured in their medicine, literary imagery, and displays of rank. By no later than 1800, sugar had become a necessity--albeit a costly one--in the diet of every English person; by 1900, it was supplying nearly one-fifth of the calories in the English diet” (Mintz 6).

In drawing from other anthropological theorists who may enlighten aspects of sugar’s role as a commodity, we have our proverbial pick of the litter: Karl Marx, for example, speaks to the fetishism and resulting power dynamics behind the commodification of luxury goods in “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof” [Marx, Karl, and Fredrick Engels. “The Critique of Capitalism: Section 4: The Fetishization of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.” The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C Tucker, 2nd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 1978, pp. 319–329.]: his assertion that “man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by Nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him” can certainly be applied to the derivation of sucrose as a refined sugar from sugar cane (Marx 321). Subsequently, “the products of labour, so far as they are values, are but material expressions of the human labour spent in their production”--but Marx then goes on to remind us of the actual fetishization of these products, simultaneously boiling the humans laboring down to their labor in and of itself. (Marx 322). As Mintz informs us, “sugar has been associated during its history with slavery, in the colonies,” and its growth as a staple of English society and its subsequent colonies would not have been possible without the suffering of human laborers reduced to vessels of their ability to produce (Mintz 7).  Gregory Duff Morton, for a more modern example, speaks specifically to the commodification of time as labor. In How Work Counts: Time, Self-Employment, and Wagelessness in Rural Brazil Morton, Gregory Duff. [“How Work Counts: Time, Self-Employment, and Wagelessness in Rural Brazil.” Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 3, 2019, pp. 663–696., doi:10.1353/anq.2019.0056.], Morton comes to the conclusion that “abstract labor is a mode of tracking time by the day and the hour” in the specific context of wageless or self-employed labor (Morton 690). And, while the subjects of Morton’s studies are not slaves, nor working in a colonial super-industry to supply a crop that came to seminally incorporate with the enslaving society in question, the fact of the matter still stands--their financial inequality subjects their lifespan to the commodifying rules of capital, right down to the abstraction of long time periods into measurable, labor-based quantities. In returning to Mintz, one must appreciate his unique methods of conveying implications of hierarchical power and dominated laborers by way of the subject of sugar, and its irreplaceable role in the postcolonial western world. Nonetheless, sugar remains a worshipped commodity within and outside of culinaria in spite of its sour history.

While Mintz’s specific focus in the discussion of national craving (and the colonialist lengths a group might travel to fulfill it) centers upon food--specifically sugar--there is valuable insight to be gathered from discussions of other forms of hegemonic cravings and their indulgences. Yuka Suzuki’s ethnographic work at Zimbabwe’s Mlilo conservancy within Hwange National Park [Suzuki, Yuka. “The Leopard's Black and White Spots.” The Nature of Whiteness: Race, Animals, and Nation in Zimbabwe, University of Washington Press, 2017, pp. 3–26.] paints a picture of romanticized ethnic aesthetics: “Mlilo presented an isolated haven, where signs painted with ‘Strictly No Walking; Danger, Wild Animals’ heightened the perception of ‘authentic’ wilderness. The local residents who ran the lodges and hunting tours actively cultivated this representation because it fulfilled a certain fantasy of what it means to vacation in Africa” (Suzuki 14). While the two may seem far-flung, Suzuki’s unquestionable portrait of foreign tourists’ desire for authenticity in the Zimbabwean bush is just as much a craving as those Mintz describes in the historical creation of a national British “sweet tooth.” Just as certain areas of Zimbabwe--specifically those near its national parks or game preserves--have seemingly been transformed into locales with a sole aesthetic purpose, Mintz tells us that “the sources of sugar involve those tropical and subtropical regions that were transformed into British colonies.” In turn, Mintz emphasizes the importance of “the areas that produced no sugar but the tea with which it was drunk, and the people who were enslaved in order to produce it” (Mintz 6). Both anthropologists cite a sort of appropriation of areas populated by people of color to fulfill disparate desires for luxury: in one case, a sense of wildness or the accomplishment of killing an African beast, and in the other, sweetness and culinary indulgence. Class also plays a significant role in both situations, as we saw in an earlier quotation from Mintz on the English nobility’s possession of sugar serving as a “[display] of rank...albeit a costly and rare one” (Mintz 6). Suzuki expresses similar class divide in her own exploration of nationalistic craving:

“Safari companies owned and operated by farmers serviced an extremely wealthy clientele from the United States, Australia, Germany, India, and Japan, among many other countries… During this time, people typically paid a flat rate of US$1,500 or more per day for the hunt, which included the services of trackers, 4X4 vehicles, a professional hunter, and sometimes a videographer. When a client successfully shot an animal, trophy fees ranged from US$800 for smaller species, such as impala and warthogs, to US$20,000 or more for elephants, leopards, and lions” (Suzuki 16-17).

Between Mintz and Suzuki’s testimonies, it would appear as though the fulfillment of non-necessity craving is a distinctly privileged act. Suzuki notes that “similar wildlife industries have developed in places such as Texas, where ranches import exotic species from Asia and Africa for the purpose of sport hunting.” The majority of such business’ clients, Suzuki tells us, are “doctors, lawyers, and businessmen” (Suzuki 17). In the same sense that sugar was a status symbol for the British upper class, or so Mintz asserts, the opportunity to hunt exotic animals as trophies is representative of extremely disposable wealth. One can’t help drawing an implicative conclusion from the white, wealthy craving for the submission of African animals. Known as the “Big Five” of Africa, photographic and hunting game drives alike specifically seek the lion, African elephant, rhinoceros, leopard, and cape buffalo. Taking into consideration the Big Five are generally marketed as representative of native Africa as a whole, let alone its safari industry, what does it signify that wealthy tourists in colonized areas specifically seek to hunt and kill creatures as a trophy of conquerance? Just as Mintz’s writing supports the claim that national culinary interests are microcosmic of larger cultural patterns within a group, the search for triumph over a submissive African wilderness within the wildlife tourism industry in Southern Africa is representative of greater historical prioritizations of white supremacy, civilization, and an obligation to subdue and lead inferior races. While the notorious “sweet tooth” of the Western world may seem a minute detail in discussions of colonization, racial subjugation, and hegemony, Mintz proposes that sugar plays a much greater role in picking apart the power structures of British colonial rule. Beyond being a colonial motivator in and of itself, I posit that, through the evidence Mintz presents, sweetness overall is representative of the inherent privilege of fulfilling cravings. A base cultural appreciation for sweet food and drink does not imply wealth or power, considering the evolutionary benefit--ripe, vitamin-rich fruits do tend to taste sweet, after all--but what does change the cultural context is the treatment and method of acquisition of sugar thereafter. Not only was sugar production a motivator for widespread British colonization and the enslavement of tropical and subtropical ethnic populations; within British society itself, sugar was an expensive rarity and status symbol of the upper classes. It is ironic, then, that sugar characterizes the opposite in our postcolonial Western society. With the pervasion of so-called “food deserts”--that is, low-income areas where affordable, fresh, quality foods are far to find--surrounding American populaces of color, nowadays sugar and cheap sweets are seen as the iconography of the lower class: Cheetos, McDonalds, gas station Big Gulps, sugary cereals. And, likewise, the ability to fulfill a desire for healthy, “ethical” foods at organic groceries and markets such as Whole Foods seems to be locked behind a paywall. Perhaps, then, sugar was never the true indicator of colonial hegemony and its corresponding racial supremacy--the perpetrator all along was not sweetness, but the privilege of craving and hunting it in the first place.

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11/2019 - The Seal of Authenticity: Monosodium Glutamate, Racism, and Culinary Culture at Dutchess County Chinese Restaurants

Pretty sure that if a college professor had asked me to stop putting colons in the titles of my essays, I’d have committed ritual suicide on the spot.

Full disclosure; the assignment here was a theoretical ethnographic proposal. I never actually conducted any of the participant observations or interviews detailed.

Chef David Chang stands, stained with sweat, atop an astroturfed stage at the 2012 MAD symposium. For his stiffness, you wouldn’t believe this was the same charismatic, 40-something Korean-Virginian who founded Momofuku: a restaurant series consisting of upscale Asian eateries covering nations upon nations’ worth of cuisines, bars, and a bakery serving up sweets made with sugar-saturated “cereal milk” and cookies crammed full of corn flakes. Duly known and acclaimed for two Netflix food tourism series--Ugly Delicious and Ugly Delicious: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner--wherein he swears up a storm alongside celebrity guests and stuffs his face with everything from fresh mangosteens to lamb cooked in hot, buried beds of sand and smoke, David Chang lacks all the ease he exudes on television here at MAD. His breath is quick; he paces, hems and haws between phrases before spitting another burst of information; his table onstage is messily adorned with cryptic beakers of white powder and disposable pipettes. David Chang is discussing monosodium glutamate, and for all his apparent nerves, it is not the first time he’s done so. “In the late sixties,” Chang says, scratching his temple, gaze downturned, “an Asian man wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine saying that he found a pattern everytime he eats Chinese food with his friends: he got these terrible sort of conditions. It was in the editorial letter. And nobody questioned it. It just became part of American food culture that MSG is bad for you” (Chang 2012). Chang is describing what is presently known as MSG Symptom Complex, but more tellingly coined in the 1960s as “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”: a series of symptoms including headaches, sweating, and flushing which have been “anecdotally ascribed to monosodium glutamate,” per the British Medical Journal (Ebert 1984). In truth, MSG can be found in all kinds of cuisines that see little symptomatic complaint--Chang carries on with his neurotic speech, beginning to scratch compulsively at his wrist: “When we dry age beef, when we eat that beautiful Iberico ham, when we eat a wheel of parmesan, when we eat soy sauce, when we’re reconstituting dried mushrooms--these are all food groups that are extraordinarily high in natural umami”--that is to say, glutamic acid, an amino acid found in all living bodies and a necessary component in bodily proteins (University of Rochester Medical Center Health Encyclopedia, “Glutamic Acid”). MSG is merely a powdered salt made from glutamic acid with a rounder, more savory flavor than its standard table variety: umami, as it has come to be known in recent years (the Google search term “umami” began a steady increase from its previously low levels around October 2007). Marmite, a popular yeast extract spread in the United Kingdom and Australia, contains 1750MG of monosodium glutamate per 100G of the sticky, tar-black breakfast ooze--and yet its parent brand, Unilever, “wriggles away from the subject under questioning. ‘There’s no MSG in Marmite,’ says Unilever’s customer care line. Pressed, this becomes ‘no added MSG’—and then you’re assured that the MSG that is present is ‘naturally occurring’” (Renton 2006). Marmite, parmesan cheese, raw tomatoes--none of these foods naturally packed with glutamic acid seem to come under the same fire as one’s favorite local takeout box of lo mein. Not to mention no affliction by the name of Marmite Syndrome or Cured Ham Syndrome or so on seem to have ever floated about the culinary sphere. So if monosodium glutamate isn’t the root issue behind Chinese Restaurant Symptom--and the reputation that precedes it, resulting in a notorious Western contempt for Chinese-American eateries--what is?

THE ABSTRACT

America’s historical context of East Asian culinary and ethnic stereotyping blatantly states the foremost answer to the previous question is racism--which it is--but I would like to delve into a more specific instance of Chinese Restaurant Syndrome and its miasma of white paranoia in the following ethnographic proposal. For the sake of laying all possible cards on the table, the culture of American gastronomy to this day suffers misconceptions and stereotypes which inconvenience, endanger, and estrange persecuted racial groups in the same way jesting slurs or microaggressions between acquaintances do. To return to Chef David Chang, the American-born, Korean Momofuku founder stated in the closing lines of Ugly Delicious’ seventh episode, “Fried Rice,” that “there are foods that I grew up loving, but I was embarrassed to publicly love. It’s easier to be ignorant, and it’s easier to cast aside things.” Similarly, the previous episode of the series, “Fried Chicken,” delves headfirst into the racist stereotypes that prevent African-American culinarians--such as Chef Edouardo Jordan of Seattle’s Salare--from publicly preparing or even enjoying the charged poultry dish (Ugly Delicious 2018). Discrimination by way of food is not new. But in two majority white towns, can as little as the choice to dine or not dine at a certain eatery signify a larger issue of racial bias? That is what I seek to find in this ethnography, locally based in the disparate dining rooms of two Chinese restaurants within the Bard College vicinity--Red Hook’s Golden Wok, and Rhinebeck’s Lucky Dragon. Between intensive survey methods, interviews, and anthro-historical research into the nature of culinary culture and its potential use in racial discrimination, I hope to answer questions of gastronomy, race, authenicity, and, of course, whether MSG is really worth the fuss.

THE HISTORY

Cuisine is inherently staked in nationality and ethnicity; food is the simplest method through which one may become acquainted with a foreign culture, and hospitality represents base human needs to nurture, give, and accept kindnesses in turn. Sydney Mintz writes on the subject in Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History:

[A person’s] food preferences are close to the center of their self definition. People who eat strikingly different foods or similar foods in different ways are thought to be strikingly different, sometimes even less human. Ingestion and tastes… carry an enormous affective load. What we like, what we eat, how we eat it, and how we feel about it are phenomenologically interrelated matters; together, they speak eloquently to the question of how we perceive ourselves in relation to others (Mintz 1963).

Mintz’s anthropological methods of historical analysis serve significant inspiration for my ethnographic study as far as contextualization goes; an analysis of Chinese cuisine in America is one that requires, at the bare minimum, historical explorations of Chinese migration, assimilation, and an understanding of the interplay between lower-class white, Chinese, Jewish, and Black communities within America--not to mention the role of cuisine as an ambassador between said cultures. Yong Chen discusses urban Chinatowns and their popularity with working-class American tourists as a catalyst in the creation of Chinese cuisine designed to appeal to American tastes:

The growing appeal of Chinatown among non-Chinese leisure and pleasure seekers was not a development to rejoice over in Chinese American history. This phenomenon followed the destruction of most of the once-thriving rural Chinese communities, and the subsequent urbanization and occupational marginalization of the shrinking Chinese population… The fast-growing economy at home [in the United States] generated more wealth and leisure as well as a swelling army of tourists, hungry for new things to see and savor. A steadily increasing number of these travelers, especially those in the lower-middle and working classes, went to Chinatown to sightsee. It is in Chinatown that many American mass consumers discovered Chinese food (Chen 2014).

Chen later refers to the creation of Chinese-American cuisine as a “democratic process,” and the tale of its spread “one of the most successful grassroots marketing stories in American history” (Chen 2014). The creation of Americanized cuisine opened the doors to nearly as much criticism as non-assimilated gastronomy earns--claims that it is a watered-down form of its original; it is inauthentic. Chinese-American food is inherently consumerist; that much is true, if Chen’s statement above is any indication. But the question of authenticity is far more common, and far more damaging--not only on a minute scale amongst nonwhite business owners who may risk losing customers, but also through the larger lens of microaggression and racial discrimination. What gives Chinese-American cuisine its hyphenated label is a slough of specificities that only a history of migration and resulting discrimination can provide: a pervasiveness of cooking styles and ingredients from the Guangdong province due to its large population of emigrants throughout history (in part due to its coastal locale), Western vegetables such as broccoli, carrots, and onions, a greater emphasis on soy sauce and other salty, savory enhancers to appeal to the Western palate, and “phantom menus” at NYC eateries like Manhattan’s Hop Kee, which feature foods commonly liked by ethnic Chinese patrons such as liver or chicken feet (Maurer 2009).  Indeed, we will find in our proceeding introduction of the local restaurants of study, as well as additional commentary from David Chang and other voices in the culinary world today, that authenticity plays a seminal role in the definition and perspectives of American Chinese restaurants. That is, of course, not to imply Chinese restaurants are unique in this regard--sociologist Stephen Christ is responsible for research clarifying the subjectivity of authenticity in American minority communities, specifically Mexican immigrants working in the service industry. On an episode of The Academic Minute with Lynn Pasqueralla, president of Mount Holyoke College, Stephen summarized his study thusly:

The power to define something as authentic rests not with the restaurant owner but rather in the hands of American consumers who have had little experience or knowledge of Mexican food or traditional styles of preparation. The owner of a Mexican restaurant may claim to have the most authentic facility because his chef is from Mexico or he has more employees from Mexico than any of his competitors… When we examine the history of other ethnic foods such as pizza and hamburgers, and apple pie we find that they originated in Europe; yet, these foods have been brought into mainstream American culture. The same thing is happening with Mexican food and culture. When you think of assimilation, it’s not Mexican immigrants coming in and getting absorbed into American culture, but rather adding to it—they bring their own contributions and shape the culture in which they’re settling (Christ 2015).

In the same sense, the judgement of a Chinese restaurant’s authenticity rests not in the hands of its owners, regardless of their race--this will come into play later--but in those of its patrons, in spite of their likely lack of awareness of Chinese cooking methods and regional cuisines. As such, my study will rely heavily on the opinions of diners from the Red Hook and Rhinebeck areas.

THE SCENE

Exactly five miles apart on U.S. 9 North sit the small mid-Hudson Valley towns of Red Hook and Rhinebeck. Both essentially consist of one intersection of attractions and shops before miniature metropolitan appeal in boutiques and bakeries fizzles out into farmland, quiet suburban neighborhoods, primary schools, and firehouses. Drive three minutes outside either downtown area and you’re bound to see at least one apple orchard or horse out in its pasture. Both are majority white, with Rhinebeck clocking in at 91.3% and Red Hook marginally lower with 90.1%. Median household income is about $5,000 dollars higher in Rhinebeck than Red Hook’s $75,963; 30% of Rhinebeck’s population consists of citizens over 65 years of age, whereas Red Hook’s seniors only make up 16% of the township’s populace (U.S. Census Bureau 2018). And, most importantly, each downtown area contains exactly one Chinese restaurant.

Red Hook’s is Golden Wok. A staple amongst Bard students and within the greater Red Hook community for as long as most professors and alumni can remember (that is to say the year of Golden Wok’s opening is nowhere to be found; the earliest review on TripAdvisor, at least, is from 2011), Golden Wok sits smack between the Red Hook village hall and Cancun’s, a Mexican restaurant which also sees regular patronage from Bardians. The front of house consists of a single dining room decorated with the usual Chinese-American fare: maneki neko figures, or “lucky cats,” small stone Buddha, panda cameos, gold-leafed, ornate wall scrolls, framed newspaper clippings singing the eatery’s praises, and an all-around bounty of red and gold standing out amongst green linoleum floors and faux-jade countertops. The back wall behind the counter is plastered with photos of each of the restaurant’s many menu items--Cantonese-style fried shrimp, chow mein, steamed pork dumplings, crab rangoons with crispy shells and a piping-hot cream cheese filling--and patrons order from the visual list before taking a seat wherever they please, gazing out towards the Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union as they wait for their ample portions. In my limited experience eating at Golden Wok, folks generally prefer to order takeout whether or not they actually plan on leaving the restaurant; leftovers are inevitable, and the stacked styrofoam boxes and translucent plastic bags in which the restaurant delivers its goods make transport efficient and easy. Golden Wok does not offer delivery, but the recent appearance of GrubHub’s services in the Red Hook area allow for Bard Students and snowed-in locals to send for their moo goo gai pan from the comfort of their own home. Golden Wok currently has a 3.7 star rating on Google Reviews. Positive reviews mention efficient and friendly staff, delicious food, and a pleasant atmosphere, while negative reviews cite the opposite: rude, unprofessional, unhygienic employees, exorbitant prices, and food that made them sick the following day. Meat entrees fall at a median price of $8.85, with a few special entrees (such as lobster fried rice) barely exceeding $10, and appetizers never exceeding the spare ribs’ price of $12.35.

   Traveling south to Rhinebeck takes us to Lucky Dragon, a self-proclaimed “farm-to-chopsticks” Chinese restaurant that opened in the spring of 2019. Previously located at 38 W. Market Street, a mere block east of Rhinebeck’s main intersection, Lucky Dragon is currently relocating to a larger space and will be reopening in 2020. The address and layout are presently unknown, and thus I will be referring exclusively to Lucky Dragon’s original location in this description. A bi-level restaurant space in a renovated streetside townhouse, Lucky Dragon boasts an “apothecary bar”--a modern cocktail mixing-and-serving space inspired by the booze-infused cures of snake oil salesmen in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Bobrow 2015). The restaurant’s interior is warmly lit in spite of its relative all-day darkness, ceilings decorated with industrial Edison bulbs wrapped in egg-shaped cages of chicken wire; tables are made from glossy, stained wood; the air between the first and second floors is filled with multicolored paper lanterns, their tassels hanging teasingly down over the bar and dining room. Food is ordered from clean paper menus of red and white, and served on coordinated ceramic dishes of the same hues. In warm months, patrons can sit outside on the patio and order drinks from the full outdoor bar; when it snows, they tuck inside, surrounded by cozy wood floors, walls, and ceilings alight with a warm glow. There are dim sum specials on Saturdays and Sundays featuring a selection of different dumplings, potstickers, and shumai (flower-shaped, open-topped Cantonese dumplings), and patrons who pre-order for a large party can dine on a Peking duck feast for $80 per bird and accompanying side dishes, such as bao buns and fried rice. Lucky Dragon strikes one as a particularly inspired eatery in Rhinebeck’s collection of winners like Terrapin, Liberty, and Aroi Thai, what with its cheeky Instagram page, friendly bartenders, and weekend specials. And perhaps inspired is just the word to describe the place, considering the Lucky Dragon website specifically describes it as such:

Lucky Dragon is a ‘farm-to-chopsticks’ Chinese restaurant in the heart of Rhinebeck village, from the award-winning husband and wife team behind The Amsterdam (author’s note: The Amsterdam is an American restaurant just down the street from Lucky Dragon). Inspired by the owners’ love for the classic Chinese restaurants in their native Toronto, they decided to bring their own version of these bustling institutions to their Hudson Valley home” (getluckydragon.com).

Indeed, the proprietors and chefs behind Lucky Dragon are very distinctly not Chinese. Chef Alex Burger “draws on his experiences living and cooking extensively throughout Asia for the menu at Lucky Dragon, which is filled with his own takes on Mandarin, Cantonese, and Sichuan dishes made with fresh, local ingredients,” and proprietor Chris Jacobs has been cited in Hudson Valley magazine, claiming that “the goal is to create an authentic and fun Chinese restaurant in the heart of the Hudson Valley.” A mere paragraph prior in the article in question, writer Sabrina Sucato further emphasizes this note by stating that “authenticity is key at Lucky Dragon” (Sucato 2019). Authenticity will make for an important focus in this ethnographic study--namely, what it really means to determine the authenticity of a cuisine.

THE METHOD

David Chang sits windowside in the Glendale, CA location of Din Tai Fung, a Taiwanese-American restaurant chain with branches across the globe and one Michelin Star. Across from him: actress and comedian Ali Wong, smiling cheeks resting in her hands as she criticizes their waitress in a low voice. “Too bright. Where you worry that the quality’s bad,” Wong says over Chang’s conspiratory laughter. “You want them to ignore you.”

“I love that part of your standup where it’s like the Vietnamese restaurant you want--a good one is gonna have, like… a copy machine,” Chang chimes in.

“That yellow bucket with the mop inside,” Wong rejoins. “The shelf with the pink opaque soap in the gallon jug. But then the white people like the clean bathroom, the pleasant servers who pay attention and bring you a beverage when you ask them for it… what I wanna know--what percentage that gave it five stars are Asian?” (Ugly Delicious 2018). As the duo carries on snickering on-screen, I am reminded of my own version of the copy machine and mop bucket experience. While visiting Montreal with friends in the frosty spring of 2019, I took the task of choosing each restaurant at which we dined upon myself as the group’s token budding culinarian. Our hunt for dumplings was a strenuous one--afraid to learn a new city’s train system, we walked everywhere our chilly legs could carry us, resulting in more than a few afternoons spent nursing our calves and satiated bellies on the couch of our rental apartment. A hike through Montreal’s Chinatown after a whopping four hours of culture-absorption at the nearby art museum left us at our weakest. Still, with trembling fingers I searched for our target--a dumpling restaurant in the heart of the red-and-gold neighborhood with sparse decor, black metal chairs, and hard white tables covered with crinkly plastic cloths. Per Chang and Wong’s guidance, I knew I’d found a winner when we were seated in the back of the restaurant beside none other than half the kitchen staff, taking their lunch break and serving themselves plates of white rice with oversized silverware. We ordered three bamboo steamers full of dumplings--twelve pork, twelve veggie, and twelve loaded with scalding bubbles of soup--and demolished them within thirty minutes, animalistic and likely attracting the gazes of the staff, the only other patrons in the restaurant with us by the time the lunch hour had ended.

In pursuit of authenticity, whatever that may mean, my methods must involve participant observation. Given permission from the staff at Golden Wok and Lucky Dragon, I will spend approximately 120 hours over the course of two months at each restaurant, with my time split between the dining rooms and kitchens of each restaurant. In the dining room--long shot though it may be, considering restaurants are generally the last places people want to be approached by folks who aren’t bringing them their crab rangoons--I would endeavor to briefly interview patrons prior to or following their meals. Diners picking up orders could be conversed with while they wait for their food. Below is a selection of questions I might ask individual patrons or parties at both Golden Wok and Lucky Dragon:

Do you feel this is an authentic Chinese restaurant?

If yes, what qualities make it authentic?

If not, how might it be more authentic?

How do you feel about this restaurant's atmosphere?

Do you see this restaurant as an important part of the Red Hook/Rhinebeck community?

How is your experience with the staff here?

How often do you come to this restaurant, if you’ve been before?

Do you prefer to eat in at this restaurant or pick up and take out meals? Why?

What is the best Chinese dish on the menu, in your opinion?

Are there any dishes on the menu you’ve never heard of?

Do you ever feel sick after eating Chinese or other Asian cuisines?

Do you often crave Chinese food?

Is monosodium glutamate or MSG in food something you try to be conscious of?

These questions will aid in gauging public opinions of Golden Wok and Lucky Dragon beyond that which is shared in online reviews. To help contextualize these opinions and free ourselves of superficial assumptions, additionally, I will also tack general demographic questions onto the interviews, such as:

With which race/ethnicity do you identify (Black/Caucasian/American Indian/Asian/Pacific Islander/Other)?

Do you live in this area (Rhinebeck/Red Hook)?

What is your age?

Interviewees may, of course, choose to skip over any questions listed above or in the survey prior. These three questions in combination with the restaurant-specific questions above may help me see which demographics, if any, have strong opinions or self-imposed authority on the authenticity of Golden Wok and Lucky Dragon. Alongside face-to-face interviews, I will also survey the quantity of customers who come in per hour-long period spent in the dining room. What percentage of customers order takeout? What percentage dine in? Do any potential patrons take one look at the menu and reach for their coats? And so on.

My hour spent in the restaurants’ kitchens, on the other hand, will be focused on meticulously studying the power dynamics of back-of-house workers in these disparate restaurants. This portion of the study will be contextualized with my previous ethnographic study of a restaurant kitchen at the Culinary Institute of America, where kitchen roles were exaggerated and exemplified to best accommodate the learning of student employees. I will search for similarities between these three kitchens and note any differences between their functionalities and hierarchies. In the case of Golden Wok, several Google reviews of the restaurant implied that the business was family-owned, though no official publications, such as a website or press statement, exist to confirm this. Getting a glimpse behind the kitchen doors will clarify this fact, and help me understand what familial business partnership may mean in the context of a Chinese-American eatery. Additional information will come in the form of the restaurant’s most popular dish(es), possible mission statements, and previous career information from the proprietors of both restaurants, given they are willing to share.

THE PROCESS OF ANALYSIS

Based on my preliminary research and proposed methodology alone, it would seem much of this ethnography’s ideal impact will come from an understanding of what it means, as a dining establishment, to be “authentic.” The word itself is defined as denoting “undisputed origin”--but the fact that origin alone does not seem to play as significant a part in culinary authenticity as of late proves a complication that other anthropologists like Stephen Christ have encountered prior (Oxford Dictionaries). Christ states that a reputation of authenticity is in the hands of the restaurant patrons, and Chef Chang and Wong imply authenticity involves an unapologetic lack of adherence to Western restaurant standards, but do either of these perspectives actually imply what authenticity means in the culinary world? Author and editor at Mother Jones magazine Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn, a Thailand native, offers further insight via the tale of her move to the United States.

As I traveled around the country, landing in New York and then San Francisco, I searched for restaurants that offered the food I grew up with in Northern Thailand—dishes beyond the usual stir-fries, noodles, and rainbow curries. Whenever I found a place that featured a bowl of khao soi—a rich curry noodle soup topped with preserved cabbage, red onions, and fried noodles—sticky rice, or more than one type of papaya salad on the menu, I’d feel exhilarated. If the wait staff brought out a small rack of condiments with sugar, fish sauce, chili flakes, and vinegar—ingredients you’d find on the tables of most restaurants in Thailand—I’d feel a surge of nostalgia. Those were the restaurants I’d recommend to friends. The food was delicious, but it was the details and preparation that reminded me of home (Vongkiatkajorn 2019).

At the very least, Vongiatkajorn’s words act in some kind of concurrence with Chef Chang and Wong: authenticity, in the eyes of Asian patrons, relies much more on practice than it does a restaurant’s menu. However, Vongkiatkajorn clearly conveys this particular form of “authenticity” as a double-edged sword, politically. “I’ve always wondered whether ‘authentic’ was the right marker to focus on. The term felt loaded—a characteristic that many restaurants, especially so-called ‘ethnic’ ones, had to proclaim to draw customers,” she frets. “Who is the word ‘authentic’ being marketed to?” Referencing Sara Kay, another writer from Eater magazine, Vongkiatkajorn goes on to suggest that “using the term ‘authentic’ on review apps such as Yelp can support a white supremacist framework” (Vongkiatkajorn 2019).

Evidently, we have found ourselves at something of an impasse. Chang and Wong, a Vietnamese woman and Korean chef, agree that restaurants of a certain practice and atmosphere--a bit careless, prone to disregarding the typical Western restaurant standards of keeping messes and cleaning supplies alike out of the public eye--are authentic to the highest degree. And Vongkiatkajorn does not necessarily disagree, confessing to the exact same focus on practice over anything as superficial as atmosphere in her search for the comforts of her Thai home--but nonetheless introduces the concerning supposition that  authenticity as a topic of culinary discussion relies on racism inherent in American food culture. As such, my primary analytical questions regarding this study of local opinions of Golden Wok and Lucky Dragon, two Chinese restaurants which couldn’t be more different, are as follows:

How do racism and white supremacy affect culinary standards in America?

To what does culinary “authenticity,” in the year 2019, refer?

In the end, what really makes a Chinese restaurant--or any restaurant, for that matter--authentic?

Looking forward, will culinary assimilation ever hit its apex, or can we rely on an appearance of diverse, regional cuisine-based restaurants in the future?

Where the hell does monosodium glutamate fit into all this, and why haven’t I mentioned it since my introductory paragraph?

THE UNSATISFACTORY END

 We return to Chef David Chang, still puttering about onstage at the MAD 2012 Symposium, since finished with his speech and now answering questions from the audience. A man with glasses and what sounds like a Welsh accent--a little English, a little Irish--has the mic. His words meander, but his question boils down to whether Chang agrees that naturally occurring umami flavor, as in properly cooked meat and mushrooms, is inherently superior--more interesting, more creative--to the cheap white sprinkles of MSG used in Asian kitchens across the globe. Isn’t it a more worthwhile pursuit to strive every day in the kitchen in search of the Platonic ideal of umami flavor? The man speaks with a strange artistic haughtiness--he’s likely a fellow chef, and one who wouldn’t dare rely on store-bought MSG for flavor, no matter how harmless it really is; in his question, he seeks kinship in Chang.

Obviously this man doesn’t know Chang very well. Chang responds:

“[I’m] presuming that, when you make a dish, you’re gonna use salt, right? Fleur de sel, Maldon--something to season your food. My question to you is, why wouldn’t we season that with MSG? It is a salt in itself, as well. Most of the salt you use is not natural. It’s denatured in itself. [MSG] literally makes food more delicious. Why would I not add it? (Chang 2012).”

The issue of monosodium glutamate inside culinary circles parallels that of authenticity outside them: in essence, all we’re doing in running circles around the lack of esteem MSG possesses as an ingredient or the paradoxical shabbiness non-professional reviewers determine gives a restaurant authenticity is enclosing the Asian culinary experience within a box that simply doesn’t exist at French, Italian, or Greek restaurants. In that sense, the foremost challenge I will face in this ethnographic study is seeing the purpose of it all, and taking into account that, no matter what the reviews of a restaurant may say, nor the quality of its atmosphere or service--such scrutiny is, in and of itself, a manifestation of systemic racism and xenophobia which is only subtle to the practitioners of said discrimination. If I am to be complicit in the racism that makes standards for quality, “authentic” Chinese eateries so astronomically impossible, then I must endeavor with every fiber of my anthropological being to use the results for good, and to make known the racial discrimination which assigns Chinese-American restauranteurs an expectation of dual carelessness and perfection. Our only reassurance can come from a certainty of change--something that seems like a high hope in certain socio-political concerns, but is never far away for a culinarian. “All of this is still based on cultural beliefs, food myths,” Chef Chang says in closing his speech at the Symposium.  “And if anything, the past 20-some-odd years since Harold McGee, since Ferran, since Heston, all these great chefs started cooking--almost everything that we’ve held to be true, culturally, about food, have proven to be wrong” (Chang 2012).

REFERENCES

Bobrow, Warren. 2015. “How the Apothecary Gave Birth to the Modern Cocktail Movement.” Eater. https://www.eater.com/2015/3/20/8157777/the-rise-of-the-apothecary-cocktail

Chang, David. 2012. “MSG and Umami.” Speech, Copenhagen, Denmark. July 2012. MAD Symposium. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji74pUeMayg.

Chen, Yong. 2014. Chop Suey, U.S.A: The Story of Chinese Food in America. Columbia University Press.

Christ, Stephen. October 14, 2014. The Academic Minute. WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Ebert, A. G. "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome." British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition) 289, no. 6458 (1984): 1626. www.jstor.org/stable/29517576.

Godsey, Cynthia, Diane Horowitz MD, and Rita Sather RN. “Glutamic Acid.” Health Encyclopedia, University of Rochester Medical Center. https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?contenttypeid=19&contentid=GlutamicAcid.

Google Trends. 2004-Present. “Umami.”

Lucky Dragon. 2019. https://www.getluckydragon.com/

Maurer, Daniel. 2009. “Chris Cheung Reveals More About the ‘Phantom Menus’ of Chinatown.” Grub Street, New York Magazine.

Mintz, Sydney. “Food, Sociality, and Sugar.” Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. 1963. Penguin Books.

Oxford Dictionaries. Date unknown. “Authentic.” First Recorded Use: 14th Century. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/authentic?q=authentic.

Renton, Alex. “My Mate MSG.” Prospect Magazine, May 2006, www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/mymatemsg.

Sucato, Sabrina. 2019. “Dine on Dim Sum and Dumplings at Rhinebeck’s Upscale Chinese Eatery.” Hudson Valley, Eat & Drink.

Ugly Delicious. 2018. “Fried Chicken,” “Fried Rice,” and “Stuffed.” Directed by Morgan Neville and Eddie Schmidt. Netflix.

United States Census Bureau. 2018. QuickFacts. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/rhinebecktowndutchesscountynewyork,redhooktowndutchesscountynewyork/RHI125218

Vongkiatkajorn, Kanyakrit. 2019. “What Restaurant Reviews Really Mean When They Say ‘Authentic.’”

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4/2019 - BDSM and Binaries: Analyzing Consensual, Gendered Violence from a Non-Binary Perspective

Surprise, surprise; Clifford Geertz (the focal point of my thesis) makes an appearance here, too. Is it obvious yet that he was the only anthropologist whom I willingly read throughout my first three years of study?

Bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism--colloquially, BDSM--is a playground for the anthropologists of sexuality and violence. What a distinctly human thing, to seek out the practices that cause us pain and forcible submission simply to steamroll onward and turn them into sources of fantastical pleasure; not to mention the community of BDSM practitioners is as colorful as any microcosm of the human populace. Statistics gathered in 2014 by Christian C. Joyal Ph.D. of the University of Quebec at Three Rivers (and colleagues) show that 64.6% of surveyed women and 53.% of surveyed men fantasized about being sexually dominated--and the remaining pair of percentages fantasized about turning the tables and doing the dominating themselves. [Joyal, Christian C., et al. “What Exactly Is an Unusual Sexual Fantasy?” The Journal of Sexual Medicine, vol. 12, no. 2, 2015, pp. 328–340., doi:10.1111/jsm.12734.] The results are fairly proportional amongst the sample of 1,500 participants in Joyal’s study--and yet the practice of BDSM has been under fire by radical feminist circles, specifically, for as long as it has existed in the public eye. In the words of Patrick D. Hopkins [Hopkins, Patrick D. “Rethinking Sadomasochism: Feminism, Interpretation, and Simulation.” Hypatia, vol. 9, no. 1, 1994, pp. 116–141. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3810439.], radical feminists have asserted since the late 1970s that BDSM implies “hidden beliefs about the proper, ‘natural’ relationships between men and women--beliefs which have allowed men to control the behavior and attitudes of women for their own economic, political, religious, as well as sexual purposes.” With my own non-binary gender identity serving as a basis for a level of impartiality (to the extent that this is possible in such deeply culturally-rooted conflicts), I seek to explore the sensitive subject of consensual sexual violence in relation to gender roles and, ultimately, whether gender identity plays a detrimental part in sexual congress, no matter how stationed in fantasy it may be.

Before I move any further in my analysis of the cultural implications of BDSM, it is worth briefly summarizing a few seminal assumptions that will build the basis of this paper. Foremost, my “impartiality” refers only to a present relation to gender: I will not deny that I was raised a (tomboyish) woman, nor that my experience with public perception is not wholly feminine, save a few strangers confused by my androgynous presentation. As a result, I possess an inherent bias towards feminist theory, as well as a prioritization of women’s safety and rights in cases of sexual violence, consensual or otherwise. However, I am wary of self-identified radical feminism, primarily due to its reputation for excluding transgender women on the basis of biology. We must keep this in mind when discussing the radical feminist perspective on BDSM and its potential reinforcement of negative gender roles. Second, we must define BDSM. As previously mentioned, the acronym stands for bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism. In a 2014 issue of the Harvard Law Review [“NONBINDING BONDAGE.” Harvard Law Review, vol. 128, no. 2, 2014, pp. 713–734. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24644057.], it is stated that “BDSM stands for a wide range of sexual acts and experiences, incorporating everything from light bondage to ‘edgeplay’”--the deliberate delay of orgasm--“involving fire or cutting. BDSM recognizes that sex cannot be divorced from power or the risks that attend power dynamics” (715-716). For the sake of our gender-based analysis, I define BDSM as any consensual sexual acts rooted in discipline and power dynamics. And, finally, we must remember that gender is rooted in a complex mix of biology and social construction that still stumps scientists and theorists alike. For the sake of simplicity, I will treat the binary between masculinity and femininity as such, defining dominating practices as traditionally masculine (and so on) regardless of the gender of the practitioner. It seems simple-minded, certainly, especially coming from somebody who identifies as non-binary--but the debate of presentation versus identity is a bit too large to cover in a paper that is, in the end, an anthropological exploration of the implications of tying somebody up and spanking them until they climax.

You’ll forgive the occasional spots of dry humor. I cite Clifford Geertz as one of my primary influences.

THE MOTIVATORS OF PLEASURABLE VIOLENCE

Regardless of its pleasurable purpose, BDSM is indeed rooted in violence. Talal Asad briefly explores the complexities of sadomasochism in relation to dehumanizing acts of torture in On Torture, of Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment [Asad, Talal. “On Torture, or Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment.” Social Suffering, by Arthur Kleinman et al., University of California Press, 1997, pp. 285–308.], though his focus lies in the inseparability of pain and pleasure in particular instances. In reference to a sadomasochist handbook published in the late 1980s (around the time Asad’s own essay was distributed) [Townsend, Larry. The Leatherman’s Handbook II (New York: Carlyle Conications, 1989).], Asad writes, “This text speaks not about expressions or pain, and still less about conventional play-acting, but about pain experiences and inflicted, in which both partners, the active and the passive, are jointly agents” (Asad 300). Asad goes on to explore the argument that BDSM practices have an “essence” in the eyes of its proponents and opposers alike, pointing in the direction of the gender roles with which BDSM is so inherently tied.

“I am not denouncing a ‘dangerous’ sexual practice. Nor I am concerned to celebrate its ‘emancipatory’ social potential… The essence of what legal and moral discourse constructs, polices, and contests as S/M is not the object of my analysis. As in the field of ‘abnormal and unnatural’ sexual practices generally, state power is of course directly and vitally involved, helping to define and regulate normality” (Asad 303).

Asad does not argue with those who believe pain and pleasure can be wholly tied in sexual scenarios--but what emotional modus operandi do practitioners pursue that is supposedly so pleasurable? Like any traditionally unpleasant or painful experience, BDSM is seen by some practitioners as an opportunity to build one’s emotional and physical endurance. In conversation with Robin Bauer for an article published in Women’s Studies Quarterly in 2008, one interviewee states that she “considers BDSM an emotionally dangerous path in that one can never foresee what feelings certain acts might trigger, but like many other BDSM practitioners, she values transgression of one’s own limits as a chance to grow.” [Bauer, Robin. “Transgressive and Transformative Gendered Sexual Practices and White Privileges: The Case of the Dyke/Trans BDSM Communities.” Women's Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 3/4, 2008, pp. 233–253. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27649798.] Additionally, we see here the pervasiveness of experimentation with role as a motivator for BDSM practices. “[BDSM] creates a space that is perceived as devoid of pre-defined power relations in regard to gender and sexuality, if not in regard to other social power structures such as race or class,” Bauer continues, citing one of her interviewees in saying that “‘S/M provides a safe space for people to fuck with their gender and also for their gender identity to be respected’” (Bauer 234). Additionally, another one of Bauer’s interviewees--a white transgender lesbian--offers more important clarification. When asked about the utilization of racial or class-based role-play in a BDSM setting, the interviewee replies: “I am less comfortable engaging with race and class; perhaps because I have privilege in those areas and been very politicized around that. Those things feel very loaded for me… Age, gender, and sexuality are really hot for me… Other hierarchies are not, for the most part.” Bauer proceeds to state that this statement “summarizes a tendency” within the interviewed community (Bauer 235). Evidently, the prominence of gender roles is not merely a side effect of discipline-based sexual play--it is, in fact, a motivator for participation in BDSM, something from which practitioners derive a level of pleasure and assurance in their identities. Nonetheless, some feminist circles believe that this emphasis on gender role-play is a double-edged sword.

ANTI ANTI-FEMINISM: A GEERTZIAN ANALYSIS OF GENDERED PLAY

In Feminism Meets Fisting: Antipornography, Sadomasochism, and the Politics of Sex [Warner, Alex. “Feminism Meets Fisting: Antipornography, Sadomasochism, and the Politics of Sex.” Porno Chic and the Sex Wars: American Sexual Representation in the 1970s, edited by Carolyn Bronstein and Whitney Strub, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, Boston, 2016, pp. 249–273. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv346vqm.14.], Alex Warner opens with a description of a 1982 protest hosted by the Coalition of a Feminist Sexuality and Against Sadomasochism at Barnard College. “They rejected the idea that butch/femme sexuality--” the traditional dichotomy of masculine-presenting and feminine-presenting lesbians--“and sadomasochism could be healthy or sexually liberating for women, and argued instead that feminists must ‘analyze oppressive sexual institutions and values as we put forth a sexual politics founded on equality, creativity, and respect for female bodies and eroticism’” (Warner 249). Feminism in and of itself is an endless paper worth thousands upon thousands of pages, but to keep the current topic on track, we shall carry on under the assumption that feminism, at its core, is simply a fight for the equal political, economic, and social treatment of men and women. The use of the term “female bodies” above, however, is one that tends to set off red flags in a modern context. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (or TERFs, as they are presently known) tend to function on the basis that femininity is defined by biological sex, and thus transgender women may not participate in feminist circles. And while well-known feminist organizations such as the Women’s March boast intersectionalism for the sake of transgender and non-binary feminists [The Women's March 2019 Agenda. The Women's March 2019 Agenda, Women's March, 2019, womensmarch.com/.], I have witnessed in person protest signs which push the philosophy that womanhood and menstruation, uteri, vaginas, etc. are equivalent.

[Massony, Theresa. “20 Of The Most Powerful Signs From Women's Marches Around The World.” Elite Daily, Elite Daily, 17 Dec. 2018, www.elitedaily.com/news/politics/most-powerful-signs-womens-march/1761630.]

[Wickman, Forrest. “The Best, Nastiest Protest Signs From the Women's March on Washington.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 21 Jan. 2017, slate.com/human-interest/2017/01/the-best-protest-signs-from-the-womens-march-on-washington.html.]

It is for this reason that I will take on a particular stance against this specific brand of feminist thought in this analysis: anti anti-BDSM, inspired by Clifford Geertz’s Distinguished Lecture: Anti-Anti Relativism. [Geertz, Clifford. “Distinguished Lecture: Anti Anti-Relativism.” American Anthropologist, vol. 86, no. 2, 1984, pp. 263–278. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/678960.] As Geertz aims to “counter a view rather than to defend the view it claims to be counter to,” rather than defend BDSM as an innocuous, patriarchy-free act of private seuxal play--because that, as I have mentioned previously, is a sizable and complex can of worms--I will argue against the radical feminist belief that BDSM promotes male domination and the masculinization of eroticism. Just as Geertz cannot necessarily side himself with cultural relativist theory for its overly-delicate failure to create comparisons between cultures--“What the relativists, so-called, want us to worry about is provincialism--the danger that our perceptions will be dulled, our intellects, constricted, and our sympathies narrowed by the overlearned and overvalued acceptances of our own society”--I cannot say that BDSM as it is practiced today is entirely free of harmful, patriarchal standards (Geertz 265). But, through a look at the history of BDSM, I can at least defy the radial feminist belief that it is specifically intended to “[advocate] the same kind of patriarchal sexuality that flourishes in our culture’s mainstream” (Warner 249).

THE ROOTS OF DISCIPLINED SEX

Per yet another subject in Robin Bauer���s interviews, “gender [in BDSM scenarios] is ‘not at all based on biology, because there are lots of people who don’t identify as boys in their everyday life, but within S/M context they’ll be boys” (Bauer 234). There is certainly a sort of masculine prominence in the “domination” side of BDSM, and it does make sense that the radical feminist bias against the practice should come from here. On the contrary, Bauer states this is a result of the “homosocial/sexual camaraderie [WWII veterans] were familiar with from the military” after returning home only to feel outcast without their circles of fellow gay foot soldiers. The result was the formation of “gay male biker clubs” and “all-male friendship networks” as soldiers fought to reignite the close relations they found in the war--and it was not until the 1980s that gay women formed their own BDSM groups such as San Francisco’s Samois and New York City’s Lesbian Sex Mafia (Bauer 237). Based on the largely homosexual tint to the history of BDSM, the radical feminist notion that BDSM was fashioned to enforce patriarchal, heteronormative gender roles is invalid. If its advent was sparked by gay veterans seeking a comforting replication of the dynamics they experienced in World War II (one that could, per Bauer’s interviews, allow for personal growth and perhaps help to cope with post-traumatic stress), BDSM practiced in private settings cannot serve an inherent threat to “women’s liberation” (Hopkins 116). BDSM was claimed by gay men and gay women first and foremost--only following the formation of these groups did sadomasochistic sexual play make its way into the heterosexual world, implying that the very conception of BDSM was based not around the liberation or subjugation of women by men, but in the need to safely explore consensual gay power dynamics. This is not to say the practice of heterosexual BDSM is some kind of appropriation--as we have seen in both Asad’s analysis and Joyal’s statistics, people of every sort are perfectly capable of finding pleasure in pain and control, and furthermore, the fluidity of gender roles is not limited to the LGBT community.

With historical context in mind, I argue that BDSM is based entirely on gender roles, both in the motivation to practice it and in its origins--but those are homosexual, transgender, and non-binary origins, specifically, and thus free of the heteronormative dynamics feminist theory is so concerned with. Nonetheless, what of my anti anti-BDSM stance? I did promise that I could not defend BDSM entirely--and I stick to that notion, as not even the historical purity of safe homosexual gender role-play can guarantee the pure intentions of modern BDSM practices, especially in heterosexual, cis-gender circles. But to the end that BDSM is still practiced by LGBT couples, I argue for the importance of replication versus simulation in consensual contexts. “S/M sexual activity does not replicate patriarchical sexual activity. It simulates it,” Patrick D. Hopkins says. “Replication implies that S/M encounters merely reproduce patriarchal activity in a different physical area. Simulation implies that S/M selectively replays surface patriarchal behaviors onto a different contextual field. That contextual field makes a profound difference” (Hopkins 123). To what extent is violence with different intentions, different results, a different setting, and different participant dynamic still the same sort of violence it was before? Sexual scenes of all sorts can go awry; ropes get tangled, condoms break. But with the history of BDSM in mind--namely, the continued importance of safe, private exploration of gender as it applies to LGBT relationships--perhaps tying somebody up and spanking them until they climax isn’t such a dastardly anti-feminist act, after all.

[buckapedia]

5/2019 - You Who Enter Here: A Survey of Depictions of Dante’s Hell

As the most popular and acclaimed entry in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy--an epic poetic trilogy on the overarching subjects of faith, free will, and love--Inferno serves as an introduction to a classic poem rife with vivid, visceral imagery. [Alighieri, Dante, et al. Inferno. Random House, 2003.] In its departure from the dolce stil nuovo, a poetic style reliant on characteristic sweetness and chastity, such as that seen in the Vita Nuova--

“Often he commanded me to go and look for this youngest of angels; so, during those early years I often went in search of her, and I found her to be of such natural dignity and worthy of such admiration that the words of the poet Homer suited her perfectly: ‘She seemed to be the daughter not of a mortal, but of a god’” [Musa, Mark. Dante's Vita Nuova: a Translation and an Essay. 1973.].

--Inferno departs to an entirely new stylistic locale. It is packed with scenes of gore and torture, from the weeping, parasite-infested souls awaiting entry to Hell to the eternal torment of the Treacherous as they are tediously consumed by the gnarled heads of Satan (III: 64-69; XXXIV: 55-67). One can only imagine that it is this iconic and vivid gruesomeness for which so many illustrative adaptations of the Inferno exist. But in spite of the fact that many of these artistic depictions do emphasize the brutality of Dante’s Hell, their commonalities and differences alike reveal that Inferno’s greater themes are still at stake, even in these entirely new mediums. Through analyses of three different illustrations of Dante’s Inferno, all distinct in era and medium, it becomes clear that interpersonal connection reigns more prominently than any superficial gore or torture in all iterations of Dante’s iconic Hell.

   During the late 1400s, Sandro Botticelli (of The Birth of Venus fame) intended to illustrate every canto of Dante’s Inferno. While several of his original sketches have been lost to time, twenty-five have been archived for study--and they depict, as promised, both a fitting excess of gore and compliance with the interpersonal relationships featured in Dante’s epic. One such relationship--the foremost in the trilogy, and perhaps the most enduring--exists between Dante and his guide through Hell and Purgatory, Virgil. Dante initially refers to Virgil as his “leader,” his “lord and master,” but comes throughout the events of Inferno to view the poet of antiquity as a parental figure, evidenced by various references to Virgil’s familial actions (II: 140).

“My leader in a moment snatched me up,

Like a mother who, awakened by the hubbub

Before she sees the flames that burn bright right near her,

Snatches up her child and flees,

And, more concerned for him than for herself,

Does not delay to put a shift on” (XXIII: 37-42).

And despite their clear focus on the beasts and gore of Dante’s hell, Botticelli’s illustrations do not fail to honor the narrative significance of Virgil’s guidance. Consider these depictions of Dante and Virgil entering the sixth and eighth circles of Hell--Heresy and Fraud (the diviners’ pouch, specifically):

[Botticelli, Sandro. The Punishment of the Heretics; Diviners. 1480-1495. Silverpoint on parchment. http://www.worldofdante.org/gallery_botticelli.html. 17 May 2019.]

In a unique, comic-like fashion, Botticelli depicts Dante and Virgil moving across the pages , gesturing and leaning inward towards one another so as to suggest conversation in a wordless illustration. Nearly every one of Botticelli’s illustrations feature Dante and Virgil in some form, be they merely a pair of tiny figures in the corner of some massive scene of suffering and torture. They serve a visual through-line between Botticelli’s drawings and, had his illustrated manuscript come to published fruition, it would have set the stage for modern forms of graphic storytelling on a much wider scale.

One such illustrated manuscript of Inferno which did find distribution to the greater populace, however, is accredited to the definitive and iconic work of Gustave Doré. Personally financed and published in 1861, Doré’s dimensional woodblock prints take a subtler, more atmospheric approach to Dante’s narrative than the straightforward works of Sandro Botticelli. A particularly iconic example features Paolo and Francesca, whom Dante encounters in the circle of Lust, recollecting their initial moment of unlawful commune. Contrast this with Doré’s illustration of the eternal torture of the lustful: it is violent and dynamic, void of the soft light which adorns his print of Paolo and Francesca.

[Doré, Gustave. Hellish Hurricane That Torments the Lustful; Paolo Kissing Francesca. 1890. Woodblock engraving. http://www.worldofdante.org/gallery_dore.html. 17 May 2019.]

Many of Doré’s engravings feature the intense lines of action and motion seen in the torturous scene of Hellish Hurricane That Torments the Lustful, which illustrates the “hellish squall” which “sweeps spirits in its headlong rush, / tormenting, whirls and strikes them” (V: 31-33). But a proportionate quantity take the softer approach of the rightmost illustration, that of Francesca’s memory of Paolo:

“When we read how the longed-for smile

Was kissed by so renowned a lover, this man,

Who never shall be parted from me,

All trembling, kissed me on my mouth” (V: 133-136).

Earlier in his manuscript, Doré includes an illustration of Virgil’s meeting with Beatrice, a scene which remains relatively unpopular in Inferno’s artistic canon. The result is not unlike that of Paolo Kissing Francesca: fixated on a minute dynamic that builds Inferno’s narrative in significant ways, it is yet another contributor to Dante’s overall argument throughout the Divine Comedy that love is the interconnecting factor of the universe.

In a drastic departure from Sandro Botticelli’s traditional approach to illustrating Inferno, and further still from Gustave Doré’s more somber specialties, let us move now to the most recent widespread adaptation of Dante’s iconic depiction of Hell: EA Games’ Dante’s Inferno for the PlayStation 3, released in 2010. [Electronic Arts. “Dante's Inferno.” Electronic Arts Inc., Electronic Arts, www.ea.com/games/dantes-inferno.] Inspired by Sony’s successful God of War franchise of video games, which rely on a mechanic of the player slashing indiscriminately through hordes of monsters, the Electronic Arts company opted to try its hand at the genre through an adaptation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The interactive reimagining of Dante’s classic poetry is, needless to say, heavy-handed. One such example is the adaptation of Charon’s character in video game form. The ferryman of the Acheron is given new purpose in his profession in EA’s Dante’s Inferno--he is, quite literally, a ferry-man.

[Wayne Barlow. Charon. 2008. Pencil on paper, digital ink. https://waynebarlowe.com/artwork/film-tv-game/. 19 May 2019.]

The result is the transformation of a marginal character from one sort of narrative set piece into another--combat takes place in Charon’s hull; he is undoubtedly part of the landscape. Nonetheless, the artists behind Dante’s Inferno (in this case, the famed Wayne Barlow) retained a level of Charon’s humanity, allowing for his dynamic with Dante and Virgil to remain seminal in the plot. Additionally, contrast Dante’s somber, subtle description of Lucifer--“the emperor of the woeful kingdom,” “out of six eyes he wept and his three chins / dripped tears and drooled blood-red saliva” (XXXIV: 28, 53, 54)--with that of EA’s adaptation, as retold by AV Games’ Nick Wanserski:

“Initially, the game’s Satan follows the description of the original text. A giant with three heads and bat wings blooming from every surface, it hammers at you with massive fists. But halfway into your battle, Lucifer splits himself open at the belly with his own claws and a little Lucifer steps out. Apparently, the Devil rides around in a giant Satan like he’s piloting a robot in a Japanese anime—an Immobile Suit Gundamned” [Wanserski, Nick. “What the Dante's Inferno Game Lacked in Subtlety, It Made up in Devil Dong.” AV Games, The AV Club, 23 Aug. 2017, games.avclub.com/what-the-dante-s-inferno-game-lacked-in-subtlety-it-ma-1798283711.]

As ridiculous as this imagery may sound, it does have legitimate basis in the creation of an interactive artistic experience such as a video game. The so-called “little Lucifer” mechanic makes for a prolonged final battle with a deeper hidden meaning: EA’s Dante faces a large, unfathomable danger in the form of the massive king of Hell, only to conclude combat with a far more humanoid threat. For as silly as it seems, EA’s decision furthers Dante’s emphasis on interpersonal relationships by giving Dante and Lucifer a legitimate human dynamic to add weight to their fight. Perhaps the most obvious change to the source material in EA’s Dante’s Inferno, however, is the overarching plot and goal of protagonist Dante. From IGN.com’s review of the game:

“Players assume the role of Dante, who descends into Hell after returning home to find his beloved Beatrice murdered, with Lucifer seducing her soul into the underworld. His mission is to save Beatrice, but he soon realizes he is also in Hell to face his own demons and ultimately to redeem himself” [IGN. “Dante's Inferno.” IGN, www.ign.com/games/dantes-inferno.].

While this narrative adaptation could not possibly be further from Dante and Beatrice’s nonexistent real-life relationship, it does add yet another layer of interpersonality to EA’s interpretation of its source text. With love and self-betterment at its core, EA Games’ Dante’s Inferno clumsily follows its predecessors  as yet another visual interpretation of the Divine Comedy which understands the importance of interpersonal relationships as one of its foremost themes.

Between these three artistic adaptations of Dante’s Inferno--all different in era, medium, and style--the primary point of resonance in the Divine Comedy’s first entry becomes clear. For as much as Botticelli, Doré, and the many artists behind EA’s Dante’s Inferno do revel shamelessly in the poem’s iconic scenes of gruesome torture, their overarching illustrative thread comes in the form of not violence, but humanity--and human relationships, specifically. Botticelli threads the ever-moving figures of Dante and Virgil into his drawings; Doré moves the spotlight between various underrepresented dynamics in the poem, such as Virgil and Beatrice or Francesca and Paolo; EA Games makes an enduring and selfless love (however fictionalized) the single stake to Dante’s journey. This recurring motif brings to mind the words of Dante himself--in the finale of the Divine Comedy, Paradiso, the poet reveals what he believes to be the single uniting factor of the universe: “But now my will and my desire, like wheels revolving / with an even motion, were turning with / the Love that moves the sun and all the other stars.” [Alighieri, Dante, et al. Paradiso. Anchor Books, 2008.]

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4/2018 - Decorative Arts Analysis: The Contemporary Exhibitions of Versailles

NOTE: This essay originally contained footnotes of reference for all photographs and quotations, but it would seem my bibliography was filed separately and lost somewhere along the way. Artist credits will be made clear throughout the paper, but I regret to say photojournalists will go uncredited in this piece. Due to its purely educational and archival existence, I believe this is forgivable, but I do apologize to the uncredited photographers and reporters regardless.

A testament to the obscenity of 17th century French absolutism, the Palace of Versailles just outside of Paris, France, contains in its mere architecture and decor an encyclopedia of northern Baroque and early Rococo tastes. The Palace’s production began in 1642, entrusted in its planning stages to French architect Jacques Lemercier by the royal family of King Louis XII and later realized by a team led by Louis le Vau, Versailles was declared the official residence of the royal family, as well as the French monarchical court, twenty years later, during the reign of the proceeding monarch, Louis XIV.  Such an obscene act of decadence on the part of Louis XIII was an effort to centralize power in France’s fragmented state - and Louis XIV took his father’s aims many bounds further, adopting the philosophies of centralization we attribute to absolutist monarchies today.

[Louis XIV] viewed himself as the direct representative of God, endowed with a divine right to wield the absolute power of the monarchy. To illustrate his status, he chose the sun as his emblem and cultivated the image of an omniscient and infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) around whom the entire realm orbited. While some historians question the attribution, Louis is often remembered for the bold and infamous statement “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).

The estate and Palace of Versailles befit their purpose of absolute power and extravagance, housing Le Brun murals, Sèvres porcelain dinnerware, and furniture and tapestry work from the Parisian Gobelins manufactory.  Versailles’ very aesthetic identity served as the primary inspiration for the Rococo movement.

So one must wonder at the decision made in 2008 to house seasonal contemporary art exhibitions.

I do not consider myself a snob in any sense of the word, least of all when it comes to the curation of fine art. Diversity of work is what makes a colorful museum experience (or delays the inevitable fatigue, at least), and this belief only extends more admiringly to Versailles’ contemporary exhibitions. That is not to say the incensed reaction of historical traditionalists was not, at the very least, understandable. A supposed ancestor of the royal family went as far as to file a lawsuit against the Palace of Versailles and attempt to ban the first of its contemporary exhibitions:

Little over the past few months could have prepared the American artist Jeff Koons for the aristocratic rage of Prince Charles-Emmanuel de Bourbon-Parme. The formidably foppish Koons critic, who claims to be a direct descendant of Louis XIV, has launched a last-minute legal battle against what he describes as a "mercenary" and "pornographic" stain on his illustrious family's honour. He says the exhibition, which is due to close in just over a week, is an attack on the "right immemorial" of all human beings not to see their ancestors disrespected.

While it is fair to say that a massive, magenta, stainless steel balloon animal might be a somewhat guache sight in the center of one of this classical Palace’s great halls, the claims of Prince Charles-Emmanuel de Bourbon-Parme - and any other critics of the Palace’s decision to feature contemporary artwork - are groundless. In the words of the estate’s management, “Today, as in the time of Louis XIV, Versailles is a place of contemporary creation… A venue for contemporary creation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Palace of Versailles has restored its links with contemporary creativity since 2008.”  If anything, the Palaces’ efforts to draw diverse crowds interested in both striking modern art and priceless Baroque decor respects Versailles’ original purpose better than any snobbish preservation ever could. We must not forget that Versailles’ pledge was always one of centralization through extravagance and trendsetting - how else could Louis XIV have controlled the wily court of France? With this in mind, let us take a look into two of Versailles’ gaudiest contemporary exhibitions: those of Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami.

As mentioned previously, the Palace of Versailles began its contemporary art exhibition program in 2008. The first artist housed was the kitsch-centric Jeff Koons, a Pennsylvanian with a love for the banal, topical, and colorful. A full catalogue of Koons’ Versailles exhibition can be found on the artist’s website, but a few choice images truly display the almost-humorous contrast between Koons’ contemporary work and the decor of the Palace of Versailles.

Koons’ glossy pastels and cartoonishly flat stylization are clearly inspired by the American Pop Art movement in the 1960’s, known for its combination of social commentary and bold imagery. Pop movement pioneers like Andy Warhol tackled similar themes of mass production and media through the exploration of everyday objects, and his influence is evident in the way Koons’ work straddles irony and sincerity. In a 2011 exclusive with Sotheby’s, a massive British fine art auctioneer, Koons referenced the movements of Versailles directly while discussing Pink Panther’s (shown above) themes of sexuality: “The Baroque and the Rococo always is this negotiator of control and giving up control, and I think that’s really kind of captured here in the Pink Panther; to develop, kind of, trust in the self - and to be able to move forward, you have to deal with control and giving up control.”  It’s likely the control and lack thereof to which Koons refers is based in the controlled chaos of Baroque and, to a different extent, Rococo art. By definition, Baroque embraces the beauty in nature’s inherent nonsensicality:

“The term Baroque probably ultimately derived from the Italian word barocco, which philosophers used during the Middle Ages to describe an obstacle in schematic logic. Subsequently the word came to denote any contorted idea or involuted process of thought. Another possible source is the Portuguese word barroco (Spanish barrueco), used to describe an irregular or imperfectly shaped pearl.”

While it is less visually obvious in Pink Panther and Bear in Policeman, a different Koons piece displayed in Versailles carries clear aesthetic references to the Baroque movement: Michael Jackson and Bubbles (shown below).

The prominence of gold in Michael Jackson and Bubbles, as well as the faux-embroidered accents and flowers around the base of the figure, resemble the Baroque detailing that can be seen on Versailles’ wainscotting and accent pieces. Koons’ work evidently complements the glittering details of Versailles’ Baroque interior stylings with its own modern-day take on Western extravagance - but the contrast, on the other hand, of a Japanese contemporary such as Takashi Murakami draws an even more fascinating emphasis to the aesthetics of extravagance across the globe.

Takashi Murakami is a contemporary artist from Tokyo, Japan, and the influence of Japanese animation and comics show in his bold works, be they lithographs or massive fiberglass figures. Murakami’s work follows a movement of his own design: Superflat.  Coined by Murakami himself in the 1990’s in protest of the Western-dominated world of fine art, Superflat describes the movement’s emphasis on the employment of flat planes of color, typically in the stylings of Japanese anime or manga - in short, an unbelievable stylistic shock compared to Versailles’ Baroque.

Much like Koons’ exhibition in 2008, Murakami’s work was received with fury and resistance by French traditionalists.

“Prince Sixte-Henri de Bourbon-Parme believes Murakami's brightly coloured work dishonours the memory of his ancestors. The prince and fellow protesters say Murakami "denatures’ French culture. ‘We're not against the modernity of art but against a way of thinking that denatures and does French culture no good,’ the prince said.”

It should be noted that, in spite of their similar names, this protestor and the one who filed the lawsuit against Jeff Koons in 2008 are two different men. Bourbon-Parme’s use of the term “denature” is an interesting one - I’m even tempted to agree, though not to the negative extent to which the Prince uses the word. Murakami’s work does indeed twist the inherent principles of French Baroque art, bringing some characteristics to light and hiding others - perhaps assigned in acts of patriotism, but nonetheless present. Takashi Murakami’s work is “a celebration of his teen years as a self-described otaku” - to the uninformed, one obsessed with Japanese culture as it is saccharinely portrayed in cartoons and comic books.  So it is safe to say that Murakami’s work explores a Japanese nationalism parallel to that displayed in Versailles’ grand baroque murals. Much like the natural complement between the extravagant nature of Jeff Koons’ exhibition and the Palaces’ historical charge, there is unity to Murakami’s work and the Palace of Versailles: namely, through exaggerated iconography, the shameless fetishization of a nation’s self-proclaimed cultural identity.

Even in spite of apparent aesthetic dissonance, interaction between contrasting art styles can bring out new features in either piece, creating an amplification of beauty between the two. This is best proven what might be the most extreme of cases: the French Palace of Versailles’ contemporary art displays, first exhibited in 2008. Through the unique and oft-outrageous works of Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, and many others, new life (and tourism income) has been brought to the Baroque beacon of absolutist power - and one can’t help commending the administration, and wondering where Versailles and its contemporary guests might take us next.

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And that’s it for my college thesis! Glad to have it up somewhere besides the bowels of Bard’s archives. Up next, an assortment of standalone essays from throughout my Bachelor’s study.

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[5/2021 - Cock: Essays and Illustrations on Attention, Accessibility, and Deep Play] Conclusion

Accessibility is a difficult thing, reader. One anthropologist’s accessible could well be another’s academic hell, and I don’t doubt that, for as imbued as it is with my attention deficit and hyperactive sensibilities, this anthology will not appeal to all members of my chosen field. Even within the population of those diagnosed with ADHD, the disorder generally splits somewhere down the middle of its two aforementioned components in all their individual complexities; perhaps those who lean more towards the A and D more so than my own H will utterly lack interest in reading fifty-or-so pages on not just one anthropologist, but one entry in his canon.

But if I have introduced the wonders of Clifford Geertz to a mere few, anthropological experts or laypeople alike, I will have considered this endeavor a success. Anthropological engagement as textual interpretation, in contrast with the field’s more famed ethnographies, seems to lack identity and prestige (at least from where I’m sitting) for its monotony. Generally, an anthropological thesis takes the form of ethnography, following in the footsteps of academic giants in efforts to study peoples within and without a student’s surroundings. It simply didn’t come naturally to me, and anyways, the ethnographic genre is certainly not wanting for multimodality these days. Every ethnography allows one a glimpse into worlds in and of themselves, as diverse as any other form of narrative literature; were more people like me to adapt and regurgitate those most influential to the field at the very least, anthropology as a field would garner new eyes from neurologically diverse audiences. No one argues the study of chemistry is merely inaccessible text wrought with jargon--were that the case, children’s chemistry kits would not exist, nor the sorts of explosive Youtube videos one could waste their day on. Anthropology is just as deserving of a variety of forms--as any social science, it gives us insight and empathy into otherwise wholly separate peoples whom we may only see some exposure to through internet connectivity (multimodal anthropology in and of itself, I’m sure those with more time than I have written).

Anyhow, there it is. Much of my experience in the American educational system has been a battle between myself, my ADHD, and archaic teaching methods which somehow still have not been updated to acknowledge the psychological diversity that is a reality in all academia. For once I’ve been given utter freedom to exercise my anthropological knowledge in the methods I love best, with no rubric in mind but my own personal tastes. For as much as writing a required thesis paper of fifty-plus pages can be considered play, I would define this anthology as such, and deep in its manifestation of the way I, ever unbending, most enthusiastically interact with the world around me.

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[5/2021 - Cock: Essays and Illustrations on Attention, Accessibility, and Deep Play] The Attention Deficit Ethnography

Despite going undiagnosed until the winter of my junior year at Bard, ADHD has long--and unbeknownst, by name, to me--affected my existence in the American educational system. ADHD--or Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder--is plagued by misunderstanding; most associate it with its titular inattention in a marriage with the proceeding hyperactivity: likely a sixth grade boy with a blonde rat-tail at the back of his neck spitting non sequiturs in math class. Much like Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), ADHD often goes undiagnosed in children who are raised presenting as female. Societal pressures to keep quiet and poised compared to their boisterous, boyish counterparts result in the self-stimulatory behaviors ADHD inspires manifesting totally differently from the long-observed outbursts and executive dysfunction associated with the disorder. A team of four mental health specialists from the Innlandet Hospital Trust in Lillehammer of Oslo, Norway, alongside Martin H. Treicher of the Harvard Medical School, found that “females with ADHD are reported to have fewer hyperactive/impulsive symptoms and more inattentive symptoms when compared with males with ADHD. Further, females with ADHD present more commonly with the inattentive subtype than do boys. Less disruptive behavior in females with ADHD may contribute to referral bias causing underidentification and lack of treatment for females with ADHD.” [Skogli, Erik Winther et al. “ADHD in girls and boys--gender differences in co-existing symptoms and executive function measures.” BMC psychiatry vol. 13 298. 9 Nov. 2013, doi:10.1186/1471-244X-13-29859] The team goes on to note that further studies on the subject have proven primary-level teachers are more likely to refer male students for ADHD diagnosis than female, despite equivalent levels of learning impairment. 

All that being said, I won’t claim to have been ladylike at any point in my youth. My mother proudly cites from minute one that I was characteristically befuddling; when I popped out, pink and slimy, she and my dad proclaimed a joyous “it’s a boy!” at the sight of my umbilical cord tangled and dangling conspicuously between my thighs. The doctors shared amused glances, corrected the error by nudging my makeshift gonads out of the way; nowadays, we all like to laugh at the kismet of my androgyny even as early as my first gasping breaths. Born just two years after my older brother, my stay-at-home father raised us with little more than convenience in mind. He knew I admired my elder, so why not treat his newest offspring to matching cargo shorts and turtlenecks from the Baby Gap’s boys department--better yet, hand down the same ones my brother had worn? We shared toys, activities, penchants for garbing ourselves in secondhand silk scarves and springtime Wisconsin slush alike. The irony of my brother turning out to be gay while I took up the mantle of traditionally boyish rebellion is not lost on us. Still, gendered society had taken hold, and my challenges piping down and sitting still in class were ignored. I was decently smart, after all, and I could focus on tasks pertinent to my interest like nobody’s business--I suppose it was assumed I was simply bullheaded than struggling with my own brain chemistry, for better or for worse.

Long story short, I learned to cope, as so many undiagnosed, disabled youth do. I attained the language necessary to convince teachers my doodling was benefiting my learning; I taught myself to trigger fits of hyperfocus to get work done. All the while, one of the symptoms of ADHD more commonly found, self-reported, in females, began to blossom with my nearing adulthood: anxiety. The aforementioned Norwegian team cites “higher rates of self-reported anxiety symptoms in females with ADHD” as a counterpart to the impulsivity and hyperactivity of males with ADHD--ironically, once I finally began treatment for the former in January 2020, the latter began to manifest itself with a kind of exuberant triumph that lined up quite perfectly with my transition to a more masculine presentation, complete with a new name. 

Though I first read him a couple years prior, I like to think Clifford Geertz represented that tantalizing, explosive escape from the stifling. What felt like meek self-supposition in texts introductory to the anthropological field was lost with Geertz; he expressed his theories with unfettered humor, sarcasm, dual assurance in tandem with the acknowledgement that his biases were implicit and inescapable. Where earlier anthropologists made mice of themselves in attempted silent observation, Geertz was flashy game fowl, presenting his foreign, uncertain self unapologetically in the depths of small-town Balinese culture and pressing on by any means necessary to win the favor of the locals. My own apparent subconscious need to break free of what ADHD meant to my chromosomal biology was reflected in Geertz’s escape from the highly theoretical jargon I’d gleaned from previous Anthro 101 readings; where once was seemingly endless backtracking for the sake of reinforcing a highly theoretical hypothesis (Tim Ingold comes to mind), here was Geertz in the middle of a cockfighting ring, stating plainly and unabashedly that the birds used in local sport were symbols of players’ masculinity--literal cocks, as it were.

I should note that neurodivergency--a state of psychological being as it pertains specifically to the functional disorders of ASD, ADHD/ADD, and Dyslexia--gets along quite nicely with taboo, for better or for worse. We’ve all heard stories of folks with Tourette’s syndrome smattering their everyday small talk with curses and slurs, perhaps witnessed it in person; autism comes unquestionably with the stereotype of speaking out of turn, stating blunt and oftentimes inappropriate things with no malicious intent. ADHD as I experience it is much the same; riling myself and others up is self-stimulating, and results in an automatic spark of satisfaction in spite of any immediate consequences. So you can imagine my joy when Geertz wrote those fateful words: “To anyone who has been in Bali any length of time, the deep psychological identification of Balinese men with their cocks is unmistakable. The double entendre here is deliberate. It works in exactly the same way in Balinese as it does in English, even to producing the same tired jokes, strained puns, and uninventive obscenities” (Geertz 60). Finally, anthropology that did not merely suit my interests in food or art or gift-giving or what-have-you--but anthropology that spoke my language, regardless of its subject matter. The irreverence and unapologetic amusement of Geertz brings to mind the same self-stimulatory behavior that brings the ADHD brain near to busting like an overworked steam engine--hyperfixation on something simple, as little as a singular word or phrase, and the unquestionably enjoyable process of dedication oneself entirely to it for a blurred length of time. While it’s not particularly healthy--a neurodivergent person can easily forego eating, hydrating, and sleeping if it means keeping their train of motivation rolling--the passion with which Geertz dives headfirst into something so humorous and taboo reminded me of the joys I already knew of hyperfixation, and fed me the beginnings of serotonin unbound by chemical poverty. Not in the way it is generally seen, as wrought with executive dysfunction, laziness, inattention--but in the way I knew it then and know it even better now, Clifford Geertz’s Notes on the Balinese Cockfight was the first academic writing to speak to me in the language of ADHD.

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[5/2021 - Cock: Essays and Illustrations on Attention, Accessibility, and Deep Play] Ingold, Illustration, and Bloodsport in the Brain

At first glance, Tim Ingold’s Lines: A Brief History seems far more surreal than the average anthropological piece. [Ingold, Tim. Lines: a Brief History. Routledge Classics, 2016.53] Accompanied at every turn by complex diagrams of, say, “language at the interface between a plane of thought and a plane of sound imagery,” the aural and visual manifestations of gesture and inscription, and star charts, Ingold tells the tale of linearity in its most literal form throughout human evolution. Lines, he claims quite blatantly, “are everywhere... It is not just that line-making is as ubiquitous as the use of the voice, hands and feet--respectively in speaking, gesturing and moving around--but rather that it subsumes all these aspects of everyday human activity and, in so doing, brings them together into a single field of inquiry” (Ingold 1). I cannot disagree, and find myself intrigued by the otherworldly quality of Ingold’s account. 

As previously mentioned, and can quite clearly be seen in the pages of this anthology, I favor drawing as a form of entertainment and means of self expression: low hanging fruit for Ingold’s theories, one might assume, though he actually opens Lines with an analysis of the linearity of auditory and musical notation. By the time Ingold gets to the subject of the drawn line, his lack of prioritization of, arguably, the most simplistic manifestation of manufactured linearity in Lines: A Brief History is evident: Ingold favors the complexity of naturally occurring delineation, as in the trampled-down earth of long-trod walking paths and the branching unconscious tracks of fungal mycelium growing outward. Drawing with a pigmented utensil is focused on with far less intensity than “the threading, twisting, and knotting of fibres... among the most ancient of human arts,” “reductive traces--for example in the sand--with [one’s] fingers,” and even a naturally occurring “precipitous gorge in an otherwise level plateau” (Ingold 42-45). Nonetheless, the connection unquestionably exists between the far more abstract delineative forms described within Lines and the so-called “doodling” I partake in for the sake of self-stimulation as a learning aid to my ADHD. “It is not enough to regard the surface as a taken-for-granted backdrop for the lines that are inscribed upon it,” Ingold states. “For just as the history of writing belongs within the history of notation, and the history of notation within the history of the line, so there can be no history of the line that is not also about the changing relations between lines and surfaces” (Ingold 39). This quotation brought to mind a term that finds its way around art schools and classes: mark-making, simplistic in its phrasing and far more technical, primal, than the artistic processes of sketching or rendering. Mark-making in academic contexts refers to experimentation at the outset of one’s education in a certain medium--to practice with the persistent fluidity of oil paint, for example, one might mix colors and test brushes on a strip of spare canvas. Mark-making begs the role of creation in less formal parts of the artistic process--and oftentimes I feel I am doing just that in my periods of self-stimulatory drawing, entirely separate from the dedicated sessions of attentive creation I generally end my evenings with.

On that note, it feels appropriate that I actually address my own work with Ingold’s sensibilities in mind. I work digitally, utilizing a Wacom Cintiq 13HD pen tablet and accompanying stylus, a lightweight Japanese drawing software called Paint Tool SAI, and an editing program called MediBang Paint; while self-stimulatory drawing in class is done using merely a ballpoint pen and sketchbook paper, I engage in far more calculated production when I draw digitally (as with the pieces that make up a portion of this thesis). The keen-eyed reader will note additions and effects that are either technically impossible or impractical in traditional art: chromatic aberration, for one--the thin outlines of neon red and cyan on either side of each marking--and the presence of screentones, also sometimes referred to as Ben Day dots. Traditionally, screentones are applied via adhesive transfer sheets cut down to size and generally make appearances in black and white illustrations to add depth in lieu of color. Digitally, screentones take the form of brushes, used at large sizes to fill areas as one might adhere traditional adhesive screentone clippings to a page and at small sizes to draw single file dotted lines. Citing artist Paul Klee, Ingold describes a “line” made of dots as “the quintessence of the static... To complete the pattern is not to take a line for the walk but rather to engage in a process of construction or assembly, in which every linear segment serves as a joint, welding together the elements of the pattern into a totality of a higher order” (Ingold 73-74). Ingold implies an inherent nonlinearity in lines formed by disconnected segments--generally a staple of my work in digital and traditional forms as a result of the constant starting and stopping that occurs as a result of both ADHD and non-artistic obligations.

Digital art offers the advantage of unlimited materials: one never runs out of ink or has to go out for another stack of screentone films or a new sketchbook. I believe Ingold would appreciate aspects of digital illustration--the infinite supply of linework hiding metaphysically within a stylus, and perhaps even the potential to readjust drawn lines after the fact. That said, Ingold is clear in his belief in the strength of a traditionally crafted line’s permanence: “When, pen in hand, Sterne recreated the flourish on the page, his gesture left an enduring trace that we can still read... Paul Klee described this kind of line as the most active and authentic” (Ingold 72). While Ingold’s present example of a traced physical gesture embodies the whole of his comprehension of the drawn line (by no fault of his own, naturally), digital art presents a greater berth for mark-making that is indirect or non-immediate. Take, for example, Paint Tool SAI’s stabilizer tool: set on a scale from 0 to 15, then S-1 to S-7, the stabilization level introduces a chosen amount of lag on the user’s illustrative gesture. With a stabilizer set to S-7, an otherwise quick stroke of the stylus creates an immaculately smooth line tracking tediously behind the cursor. Set at 0, the stabilizer has no effect, and a tremor in the hand appears as readily as it would when drawing in pencil. As my ADHD medication makes my hands shake slightly, I generally keep my stabilizer set to 3, allowing for a fair amount of natural imperfection but still keeping my lines legible. Considering Ingold’s stance that “not everything that is done in a notation... need consist of traces” which allows him to analyze the more practical tactility of fiber arts (i.e. weaving), I assume Ingold would find value in the ability to edit digital markings and their resulting impermanence.

Clifford Geertz is not particularly attentive to the superficial movements and patterns of Balinese cockfights; his focus is on the depth of meaning of non-physical interaction made manifest in the titular bloodsport. That said, the cockpit can still be analyzed for linearity: the naturally occurring circle around the action, formed of layers of viewers disparate in financial status or perhaps merely punctuality. Speaking of both the pit’s metaphysical and literal periphery, Geertz tells us that “there are two sorts of bets, or toh. There is the single axial bet in the center between the principals (toh ketengah), and there is the cloud of peripheral ones around the ring between members of the audience” (Geertz 66). The concentric geometry of Geertz’s cockpit would undoubtedly fascinate Ingold’s taste for life as a tangle of human pathways: describing Journey Through Europe, a board game dating back to its 1759 publication, Ingold states that “on a map as on the game-board, locations or positions may be joined by lines to indicate possible moves. These lines are, of course, static point-to-point connectors. Together they form a network in which every place figures as a hub, from which connections fan out like the spokes of a wheel” (Ingold 98). The Balinese cockpit, “usually held in a secluded corner of a village in semi-secrecy” but risked at a central venue during the Geertz couple’s visit, would undoubtedly take the form of one of those tangled hubs Ingold describes--all the more circular, in fact, for its real-world shape. Geertz even comes near to conjuring Ingold’s wheelhouse in his description of the cockfight’s central bet being “hedged in... with a webwork of rules,” but for the most part the theoretical venn diagram between Notes on the Balinese Cockfight and Lines: A Brief History is little more than two lone circles (Geertz 66). In that sense these pieces resemble two ends of the same self-stimulatory spectrum to me: Ingold’s creative expressions of oft menial mark-making for quiet periods of hyperfixative occupation versus Geertz’s complex, involved, and high-risk sport. Both have unquestionable value in coping with daily life based solely on personal experience: quiet boredom requires equally discreet entertainment, while manic energy begs expenditure in physically involved, adrenaline packed play. In spite of their evident differences, Ingold and Geertz’s disparate styles and subject matters mirror legitimate methods of self-stimulation in neurodivergent circles, and thus the deep play of seemingly mindless personal amusement--of which doodling in class is only one example.

This brings me to the accompanying illustration. Inspired, naturally, by Ingold’s precious line, I felt it only appropriate to experiment with a continuous line drawing--just as it sounds, a piece wherein the pen never leaves the surface of the paper (or the stylus and tablet, as the case may be). Per Ingold’s analysis, a continuous line emphasizes the organic process of creation: the line is subject to the natural whims of gesture and impulse; in the case of my ADHD, there is a particular propensity for visual anomaly. Note the thick tangle of linework towards the upper left of the page, located between the heads of the uppermost trio of roosters. The knotlike connection point of lines marks the place to which my pen instinctively returned as I contemplated my next move, and I can’t help feeling it resembles the metaphysical tangle Ingold describes in the geographical discussions cited above--the connection point between the living lines that make up human movement. Also note the presence of screentones in the piece’s background, as well as fine chromatic aberration on the edges of the central forms (the effect of which may be a slight strain on the eyes when focusing on any one spot). I delighted in the loose, frantic creation of this piece: after the comparative stiffness of typing up its accompanying essay, it felt as if I were truly honoring Ingold’s vision--however distant it initially felt from what I perceived to be my own.

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[5/2021 - Cock: Essays and Illustrations on Attention, Accessibility, and Deep Play] Illustrated Text and the Marxist Parenthetical

Multimodal anthropology of the kind you are currently reading may not be terribly pervasive in the field as a separate entity from visual ethnography--photographic essays, documentaries, etc--but visual accompaniment is far friendlier with the literary field. In some cases, we might call this translation or adaptation, though the proper term might be something along the lines of repackaging. A childhood favorite illustrated account of Ernest Shackleton’s perilous expedition to the Antarctic comes to mind: William Grill’s Shackleton’s Journey, chock full of colored pencil maps and inventories of scientific equipment and sled dogs alike. The examples don’t end there: I recall early reader-oriented picture books on the raid of Tutenkhamen’s crypt, countless entries in the Who Was...? series of children’s books on historical figures whose pasts were filled with unfathomable tragedy: Anne Frank, Joan of Arc, even Princess Diana. Illustration makes complicated or mature content more accessible not merely to children but to all visually-oriented learners, myself in all my ADHD-riddled glory very much included. Texts adapted for re-publication generally follow a standard of narrative for ease of illustration, as in Shackleton’s Journey or the story of Anne Frank; Harriet Tubman’s tales of treacherous repeated travels along the Underground Railroad lend themselves far better to visualization than, say, the political and economic musings of Karl Marx. And while that is not to say illustrating Marx is impossible, or even difficult--Marx’s imagery is vivid, despite an evident story arc--there is a prominent question of why one would choose to do so. Rius seeks to answer that in creative practice.

Eduardo Humberto del Río García--pen name: Rius--was born in 1934 in Zamora, Mexico, and drew upon the tumult that surrounded him in Central America for the political cartoons and comics he would later come to make his career. In a mix of his socio-political wit, artistic talent, and a desire to translate/adapt not unlike that complimented above, Rius created 1976’s Marx for Beginners. [Rius, Eduardo del Rio. Marx for Beginners. Writers and Readers Pub. Co-Operative, 1978.45] “Another reason for trying to take on [Karl Marx] was my wish to understand him--an ambition which I haven’t satisfied,” Rius writes in his introduction. “Marx himself hasn’t made my job any easier by forgetting to provide a summary of his works. I got even less help from all those scholarly volumes which pretend to clarify Marx, but end up being more difficult than Charlie himself” (Rius 8). Intentionally or not, Rius perfectly summarizes here the nightmare that is academic jargon when one possesses a learning disability: attempts to clarify will only dig one deeper into their pit of misunderstanding. This inaccessibility can even feel antagonistic at times, as Rius so fluently puts it: “I should also like to thank the illustrious Marxist theoreticians who, when I asked them for a hand, replied politely that I must be out of my mind to start such a work. I really appreciate their ‘spirit of co-operation’ and regret not heeding their advice before settling down with Herr Doktor Karl Marx” (Rius 9). Joke at his own expense though he might, I can at least speak for myself in saying that Rius absolutely triumphed in his attempts to translate Marx for others like him. It is not necessarily the illustrations themselves that make obvious Marx’s philosophies of materialism, the inevitable ties between ethical questions and economic questions, and the benefits to expropriation of the means of production--for the most part, they consist of portraiture spouting speech bubbles containing the content of Marx, Lenin, and Engels’ writings, or merely reacting to it. But it is the manufactured dialogue between the reader, the writings, and Rius himself that allows for a level of comfort with Marxist material, just as that which may be gained from a true conversation on a complex subject. Put simply, Rius managed to make some of the most infamously complex economic theory (simple and widespread though its conclusion may be, especially in my own radical Bard College circles) accessible--and I could not have been more grateful for that than when I was confronted in one of the most confounding one-off statements in all of “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.”

For the sake of full disclosure and context, I will divulge the entirety of Geertz’s contextual paragraph mentioning Marx here. Before the paragraph in question begins, Geertz is engaged with the subject of “examining culture as an assemblage of texts”--that is, the anthropological theory that culture in and of itself is the result of text, written or otherwise, in response to other text: “saying something of something,” in Aristotelian terms which Geertz himself cites. The texts in question, Geertz wishes to clarify, are not necessarily written word--and Geertz begins the following paragraph thusly: “Such an extension of the notion of a text beyond written material, and even beyond verbal, is, though metaphorical, not, of course, all that novel.” And so we have our thesis on this particular bit of Deep Play, and can already begin to analyze its relevance to the titular Balinese cockfight: culture is the result of meaningful practice within a group crafted in response to practices that preceded. Thus, the Balinese cockfight--as a component of Balinese culture as it existed at the time of Deep Play’s writing--is a meaningful practice in response to previous meaningful Balinese cultural practices. Culture exists in the margins between this metaphorical dialogue. With that clarified, Geertz moves on to historical examples of this phenomenon in other cultures:

“The interpretatio naturae tradition of the Middle Ages, which, culminating in Spinoza, attempted to read nature as Scripture, the Nietszchean effort to treat value systems as glosses on the will to power (or the Marxian one to treat them as glosses on property relations), and the Freudian replacement of the enigmatic text of the manifest dream with the plain one of the latent, all offer precedents, if not equally recommendable ones” (Geertz 83).

Blink, and you’ll almost certainly miss the presence of Rius’ dear enigma of an economic theorist in Geertz’s Deep Play. Nonetheless, there he is: crammed between meaningful cultural practices (let’s return to calling them texts) that exist as cultural components just the same as Geertz’s Balinese cockfights. Let’s break things down: Nietzsche’s “will to power” is a philosophical theory that went generally unrealized and unpublished until after the philosopher’s death in 1900, at which point his sister made public a collection of Nietszche’s incomplete works under that very title: The Will to Power. [Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Will to Power. Allen, 1924.47] Being that Nietzsche never fully defined the term, its meaning is, to this day, contentious. Nonetheless, it is generally considered to be Nietzsche’s conception of that which drives human action and overall existence--a sort of psychological force moving all of humanity along. And here Geertz claims that the pertinent text that exists in response to the will to power, and thus forms culture, are “value systems.” Here Geertz does not cite in his footnotes any clarifying evidence--only further discussion on the process of “freeing the notion of text... from the notion of scripture or writing,” so one must assume no specific value systems are being discussed. Instead I posit we take “value systems” to mean arbitrary societal non-truths that Nietzsche’s theory of will to power would not agree with: quite literally, in Geertz’s terms, “glosses” which obscure the will to power for worldly ideals. And here is where Marx comes in: parenthetically, as if he were merely an afterthought, Geertz likens value systems glossing over Nietzsche’s will to power to the very same value systems glossing over Marx’s “property relations.” Having gleaned what we could of the previous statement, analyzing this mention of Marx is at least a bit easier. As I see it, the strained relationships between participants in property (land, finance, goods, stock) material ownership among social classes possesses a gloss of its own: value systems, akin to those discussed in relation to Nietzsche, similarly referring to arbitrary rules sold by capitalist society as truths. Read, per Geertz’s recommendation, as evidence of the “saying something of something” cultural theory, the will to power is to social construct as capitalist property relation is to economic construct.

... Or that’s what I’ve managed to ascertain, anyway. The fact is, this apparent throwaway line--barely a reference, even--is somewhat perplexing in the greater context of “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” Why merely cite some vague reference to Marx’s stereotypical complaints about capitalism when Geertz could very well have connected the communal financial experience of cockfight betting to economic socialism, the Balinese villager’s expertise in fooling the authorities to the socialist hope to eliminate their supremacy altogether? Could illegal cockfights not be called deep play spurred on by the remnants of Indonesia’s now-banned communist party? Had Geertz elected to elaborate upon his promising reference to Geertz, we may legitimately have that worthwhile analysis of anthropological deep play in relation to economics, or at the very least social unrest on a larger scale than Geertz’s cheeky cockpit busts by the Balinese police. The Communist Party of Indonesia was the world’s largest non-ruling communist party on the planet prior to the mass anti-communist purges that ended its influence in 1965; the Balinese prioritization of community and enjoyment of lighthearted local conspiracy may well be the result of that bloody, untimely end to Indonesian socialism. When Geertz describes the good-humored Balinese dislike for self-important authorities, he may be unwittingly documenting the remnants of snuffed leftism on the island so often overshadowed by the greater Java.

Perhaps that would be a stretch, though--I do not doubt Geertz possesses knowledge of Marx, but I believe “Deep Play” could have taken on an entirely new sociopolitical tilt with an elaboration on the passing mention of Marx Geertz chooses to make.

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[5/2021 - Cock: Essays and Illustrations on Attention, Accessibility, and Deep Play] High-Stakes Bets and The Pepsi Logo

In 2009, PepsiCo paid one million dollars to the (now defunct) Arnell Group to redesign their logo. The average American consumer will undoubtedly be able to conjure the first pass in their minds: a perfect circle with three horizontal, wavy layers--red on top, blue on the bottom, and a narrow strip of white in between. Post-redesign, the present day Pepsi logo has been tilted to its left side, wavy white division between red and blue replaced by an uneven white strike, a bit like the signature Nike “Swoosh” if it lacked the boomerang-track turn in its final few pixels.

NYC branding guru Peter Arnell is responsible for the change in design. Beginning his career under the tutelage of oddball modern architect Michael Graves (I recommend a look at his work for the St. Coletta School of Greater Washington), Arnell evidently took ample inspiration from his mentor as he moved into the advertising world throughout the 80s and 90s. Arnell and his team--the titular Arnell Group--worked with brands such as Samsung, Chanel, Reebok, Mars, and plenty more, updating their visual identities for the minimalistic design sensibilities of the 2000s. I cannot say I am a personal fan of Arnell’s work, but his real masterpiece, more so than his visual stylings, is the document acquired by advertising journalism site AgencySpy justifying why a slightly smilier Pepsi sphere in the hues of the American flag was worth approximately as much as one of Picasso’s lesser known works. [Picasso, Pablo. “Now Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale: Chanteuse.” Sotheby's , 1901, www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2016/impressionist-modern-art-evening-sale-n09497/lot.22.html.37] Before actually showing the document off--and I must emphasize that it is probably one of my favorite strings of code across the span of the internet--let me move back a few paces. Tim Ingold is the author of Lines: A Brief History [Ingold, Tim. Lines: a Brief History. Routledge Classics, 2016. 38 39], a highly theoretical anthropological analysis of delineation in all its cultural forms: illustration, scripting, music, walking, etc.

As I read various passages from Lines--and then, realizing about two actual concepts had registered at first go-around, read them again (see Essay: Ingold and Neurodivergence)--I found myself reminded of a certain logo design document I’d first witnessed long ago on borderline-dadaist social media site Tumblr.com, and its glorious meaninglessness. Behold, a mere two selections from the Arnell Group’s “Breathtaking”: the world’s first graphic design report that doubles as a psychedelic trip free of charge. The proceeding images are as surreal and theoretical as those featured from Ingold’s work above, and without accompanying text beyond their captions, it is any viewer’s guess as to what scientific basis upon which Arnell drew. Arguably, the latter make use of intentional inaccessibility to trick their corporate audience into a conception of design justification beyond aesthetics; Ingold, conversely, takes pains to explain his highly metaphysical illustrations, and one cannot argue capitalistic motivations behind his writings.

To reestablish the severity of the cost of these images, one million dollars currently describes the price of a small, undeveloped island in Belize called Funk Caye. [https://www.privateislandsonline.com/central-america/belize/funk-caye]

And just like that, Ingold’s theory popped back into my mind. The universe is so purely nonsensical at its core, full of actions and expansions and explosions that can only be described by a mathematical language humanity conjured from its own limited logic and understanding. We work with lines because they start, and then they end. A human moves along a meandering path, scores follow musical staffs, and artists create images by putting a brush to canvas and moving it from point A to point B. The actual linearity of time is debatable; quantum theory puts forth that the human perception of time all exists simultaneously. Still, Ingold is firm in his stance that lines denote natural connection and trackable movement, and they seem really very sensible. Peter Arnell slapping a drawing on the conference table at Pepsi’s headquarters and claiming mere graphic appeal about his proposal isn’t worth one million dollars, but digging into the theoretical human psychology of a soft drink logo through magnetic fields, gravitational pulls, and the Golden Ratio is priceless. Humans experience time in a linear fashion, with our pasts, presents, and futures falling on a kind of personal timeline we hold vaguely in the back of our minds. What Tim Ingold theorizes--and Peter Arnell exercises--is that “every thing is a parliament of lines.” In such a matter-of-fact tone that he can almost make one believe his assertion is obvious, Ingold asks: “What is a thing, or indeed a person, if not a tying together of the lines--the paths of growth and movement--of all the many constituents gathered there?” (Ingold 5). It leans more towards philosophy than it does anthropology, but I’m pleased to lean back into my befuddled ape brain and call it truth. Lines are growth, and time, and learning, and gesture; lines weave together in the tapestry of reality to create the thing we warily dare to call existence.

Besides--and you’ll forgive the pun--the cockamamie nature of the Arnell Group’s “Breathtaking,” potential connections remain between it and Clifford Geertz’s “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” The presence of circles in both is evident; the Balinese cockpit is formed of padded siding, wood slats, sculpted concrete, or merely a chalk ring painted in the dirt, and features layered rings within the human audience based on the expense of one’s betting ticket. The circles in “Breathtaking” need not be pointed out; between the logo’s shape itself and the visual justifications Arnell provides, there are more than enough circles to make for a visual motif shared with Deep Play. But I find there to be a far more pertinent and far less symbolic connection between these two pieces: the very source of a portion of Geertz’s cockfighting circles, and the reason for “Breathtaking”’s existence. In cockfighting and graphic design alike there exists a persistence of financial risk, betting as both means to further gain and status alone. PepsiCo could find dozens of talented designers who could rework their logo for significantly less than $1 million, but there exists a high standard of expenditure in the corporate world. Similarly, cockfights could still run and profit if financed by mere admission fees--but attendees boast social status and confidence through their bets (the titular deep play). “It is because money does, in this hardly unmaterialistic society, matter and matter very much that the more of it one risks the more of a lot of other things, such as one’s pride, one’s poise, one’s disposition, one’s masculinity, one also risks, again only momentarily but again very publicly as well,” Geertz explains (Geertz 72). In the sense that finances practically mean more for social status than they do returns, “Breathtaking”’s existence as a million dollar gamble in and of itself is one and the same with the cockfight attendees of Bali. Considering Geertz names betting Bali’s premiere deep play--to reiterate from our introduction, recreation made microcosmic of real-world cultural values--it is tempting to call Pepsi’s purchase from the Arnell Group a kind of deep play, too. But to refer to any action by an industrial monolith like the PepsiCo, Inc. as “play” feels utterly disingenuous in a neoliberal sort of way--an indulgence of corporate attempts to get in with the cool kids on social media and put forth a human front before their capitalist endeavors. No, however pointless, “Breathless” is in no way intentional play, entertainment, or self-stimulation on the part of a corporation. But maybe the public response to its leaking could be.

You will recall that I first discovered the existence of “Breathless”--and its legally ambiguous appearance on AgencySpy--through Tumblr.com, a social media site primarily frequented by young members of the LGBT community in search of content to suit their comedic needs. The popularity of “Breathless” as it circulated around Tumblr should reveal all one need know of the general Tumblr sense of humor; unable to crack funnier jokes than those accidental ones found in the Arnell Group’s infamous document, the website resorted to reacting in its way to the content found within.

Unquestionably, the creation of japes for little more than public amusement is play--but I posit that it is in fact deep per Geertz’s definition: a reflection of the greater cultural values found in the communities of Tumblr.com and, by association, youth on the interwebs.

Readiness to jump on the absurdity of corporate American marketing decisions is not exclusive to PepsiCo (similar cold-humored backlash met the slough of corporations that flew rainbow flags in honor of the Marriage Equality Act in 2011, displaying solidarity only when ithad become popular opinion); I posit that this critical, unforgiving mess of memes is in and of itself a revolutionary brand of deep play. It is a reflection of anti-capitalist sentiment disguised as harmless proletarian fun, and thus parallel to the efforts for personal pride and masculinity in the Balinese folk betting on cockfights. In effect, the population of minorities on Tumblr appear to be taking part in countercultural deep play in contrast to Balinese pop-cultural deep play, though there is room for debate over whether pop culture can still be referred to as such when it is locally punishable by law. A strange connection indeed, but--in my opinion as an escapee of Tumblr.com, and one of the very jokers stamping down corporate attempts at “hipness”--indubitable.

My own take on visualizing the intersection of Geertz, Ingold, and “Breathtaking” had massive shoes to fill: such iconic and effortlessly amusing imagery as that seen in Arnell’s logo design process would be a challenge to blend with purposeful irony in light of that very document’s unintentional humor. As such, I took inspiration from the oddly astronomical, borderline abstract visuals Arnell employs in his design notes: two gamecocks dance in a tentative circle around one another atop a raised cockpit platform, their feathers illuminated by radiant light emitting from--what else?--Arnell’s new and improved Pepsi logo. Circling the cocks in turn are loose human forms as viewed from above, their feet firmly planted atop the signature splat shape of an interstellar quasar dotted with ice-blue stars. Arnell’s references to the “gravitational pull of pepsi” and the “Pepsi universe” inspired this illustration; I wanted to honor the simplistic center of gravity Arnell implies in his theoretical Pepsi-verse. Married in graphics of my own design are representations of the two types of gambling-based deep play discussed above: the high-stake bet of animalistic sport, and the high-stake bet of a million-dollar corporate logo redesign.

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[5/2021 - Cock: Essays and Illustrations on Attention, Accessibility, and Deep Play] Man-on-Animal Violence

In his discussion of cockfighting as a symbolic staple of Balinese popular culture, Clifford Geertz cites an apparently nonexistent proverb in the assertion that “every people loves its own form of violence” (Geertz 84). Original source notwithstanding--all my searches only yielded citations of Geertz himself--the prospect introduced by Geertz’s proverb feels fairly objective. It seems no coincidence that beloved Western sports of all kinds either come with the risk of injury--football, basketball, hockey--or gamble on it wholeheartedly, as in boxing, wrestling, or martial arts. It feels fair to say that the delicate dance with violence is a powerful aspect of the human experiences; plenty of studies show all sentient creatures possess the hormones osteocalcin and adrenaline and resulting tendencies toward fight or flight [Karsenty, Gerard. “Bone, Not Adrenaline, Drives Fight or Flight Response.” EurekAlert!, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 2019, www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-09/cuim-bna090519.php.28], but only humans possess the ability to describe their pursuits of threats of death for the mere thrill of it.

Still, for the sake of specificity, I sought to study violence of the cockfighting kind--not just the thrill of bloodshed human cultures covertly desire, but that which involves--and generally subjugates--our fellow animals. Geertz maintains a unique draw to his Balinese sportsmen’s identification with their game birds, both as sexual innuendo and their status as non-humans. “In identifying with his cock, the Balinese man is identifying not just with his ideal self, or even his penis, but also, and at the same time, with what he most fears, hates, and ambivalence being what it is, is fascinated by”--that is, base animal nature (see Essay: Cock Crazy for further thoughts on this). I believe that, in participating in multi-species violence, cultures conjure up representations of their own unique senses of supremacy whilst still daring to challenge them in literal or metaphysical combat. Beyond mere animal sacrifice, which does not involve the pitting of human wit against animal, I believe deep play on the level of Balinese cockfighting can be observed in various multicultural competitions with nonhumans, those cited below only being a few possible examples.

American trophy hunting culture at its wealthiest encompasses North American game and international scores alike--but some purveyors of the sport blend the two in the form of import hunting, anthropologist Yuka Suzuki explains. [“THE LEOPARD’S BLACK AND WHITE SPOTS.” The Nature of Whiteness: Race, Animals, and Nation in Zimbabwe, by YUKA SUZUKI, University of Washington Press, Seattle; London, 2017, pp. 3–26. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvct026x.6. Accessed 15 Mar. 2021.] “Wildlife industries have developed in places such as Texas, where ranches import exotic species from Asia and Africa for the purpose of sport hunting,” Suzuki says (Suzuki 17). And, despite the fact that the game meat won during these insourced safari hunts is often donated to charity organizations, Suzuki asserts that the draw of both Zimbabwean tourism and exotic import hunts “[rely] upon a particular fantasy of ‘wild Africa,’” allowing white American and European tourists to play at colonization and subjugation of African wildlife (Suzuki 16). While game hunting fulfills the practical purpose of food acquisition and thus cannot be called play, Geertz himself would agree that trophy hunting is deep play indicative of pervasive white supremacist ideals within the culture of American and European tourists who can afford the expenses of outsourced big game hunts, whether or not the animals have been imported closer to home. “The longing for a lost Eden,” Suzuki says, “propelled an age of African exploration and fused the dream of a place of untouched and exquisite yet savage beauty, with the idea of a land resplendent with material resources” (Suzuki 16). This ideological fetishization persists today in the form of African wildlife tourism, representative of colonialist ideals. The political tilt to this form of exploitative sport is evident in its related legislation: during his American presidency, Donald Trump’s administration within the Fish and Wildlife Service approved requests for Tanzanian imports of hunted lions, elephants, and even a black rhinoceros--a critically endangered species. [Fobar, Rachel. “Lion Trophy Approved for Import into U.S., Stirring Controversy. Here's Why That Matters.” Animals, National Geographic, 10 Feb. 2021, www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/lion-trophy-to-be-imported-to-us-from-tanzania.] As if to substitute modern day colonialism, white tourists in Africa exercise subjugation of local cultures through their wildlife as mere lighthearted sport. It is only fitting that these opportunities were made significantly more available during a presidency that resulted in more powerful platforms for fringe white supremacist groups and increases in hate crimes in radical Republican-majority counties. [Williamson, Vanessa, and Isabella Gelfand. “Trump and Racism: What Do the Data Say?” Brookings, Brookings, 5 Oct. 2020, www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2019/08/14/trump-and-racism-what-do-the-data-say/.]

Bullfighting (and the butchering and sale that follows) is one of the most iconic and long-lived Spanish traditions, seeing popularity even today in regions colonized by Spanish conquistadors in South-Central America. That being said, it is under about as much scrutiny as any other practice involving livestock these days. A spokesperson from Barcelona’s Association for the Defense of Animal Rights told National Public Radio (NPR) News in 2019 that bulls are “abused before they even enter the fighting ring. At 9 months old, they’re already tested for aggressiveness by being provoked.” [Benavides, Lucía. “The Eating Of The Bulls: From The Spanish Fighting Ring To The Plate.” NPR, NPR, 1 Aug. 2019, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/01/746659693/the-eating-of-the-bulls-from-the-spanish-fighting-ring -to-the-plate.] In stark contrast, nutritionist Ismael Diaz informed the same source that meat sourced from bullfights is “the most ecological meat in the world. In no other meat industry in the world is the animal as well taken care of, or as protected, as the fighting bull. That is, until he enters the ring." The battle between animal rights groups and historical preservationists, conscientious gastronomists carries on seemingly unendingly, and with worthy sensitivity--and I posit that this turbidity in talks of tradition is as valuable in analyzing the values of Spanish culture as the play of bullfighting itself. So different from the aesthetically utilitarian simplicity of sport hunting or cockfighting, bullfighting reflects the colorful history--literally and figuratively--of the Spanish people. In slaying a mindless, uncivilized beast via cultural iconography, dance-like flourish, and artful poise, does a matador not represent all of Spanish conquest over larger entities, such as the whole of South-Central America? The conflict that arises from modern and progressive views on traditional bloodsport represents national shame at a brutal past (though few European countries are exempt from this sort of civil conflict), young and international protestors taking up arms against pride in what is, in the metaphorical case and the literal, an unnecessary show of power and superiority.

Not unlike Bali, Afghanistan, too, prides itself on the popularity of bloodsport--though its people do not restrict their animal participants to game fowl. Younger generations generally oppose brutality for human entertainment, calling animal bloodsport “the distasteful domain of warlords and their armed followers.” [Nordland, Rod. “In Afghan Blood Sports, the Animals Aren't the Only Ones Fighting.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 Apr. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/world/asia/afghanistan-dogfighting.html.] Indeed, one trait the bloodsport of Afghanistan and Bali do not share is the support and participation of local police: New York Times journalist Rod Nordland reports the presence of an armed officer attending an event of a thousand strong, despite the technical illegality of dogfighting in Afghanistan. In contrast with the inherent rebellion of Balinese cockfighting (and what I posit may be deep play reflecting the ideals of Indonesia’s late communist party; see Essay: Marx and Geertz), the popularity of Afghani dogfighting is indiscriminate between classes and levels of authority. “The people who support such sports, they’re mostly poor or illiterate,” claims one of Nordland’s young interviewees, “or rich people who get their money by bad means, like the militias.” Considering the anti-authoritarian nature of Baliese deep play via cockfighting, I believe the explicit involvement of and appeal to violent authority of Afghani bloodsport is a result of Afghanistan’s tenuous history of conflict and insurrection. Naturally, one must interject with the unabashed admission of clarity in that statement: possibly to the detriment of my thesis, I do not believe the Afghani people are the source of their cultural inseparability with violence. To even suggest it would be tactless, ethnocentric, and racist. No, I assert that outside influence is the singular base source of the conflict which defines Afghanistan’s interest in bloodsport nowadays--and that is in part due to the landmass of the nation itself, simple as the notion may sound. Sitting at a historical nexus point between the East Asian powerhouses of present day China and Mongolia, Europe in its perpetual aim for conquest, and the similarly battered Middle East and Mediterranean coast of Africa, one almost need not mention the country’s billions of barrels of untapped crude oil and resulting appeal to American greed. “After 40 years of war, lots of things are broken here,” stated another of Nordland’s interviewees, this one a dog trainer and participant in illegal dogfights. Afghani citizens may seek to cope with the pertinence of violence in their day to day lives brought about by homefront civil wars and foreign intervention alike. Afghani deep play draws from indiscriminate violence to fuel its bloodsport, just as cockfighting pulls from anti-authoritarian sentiment and masculine ideals, trophy hunting from the notion of overpowering less “civilized” lands, and bullfighting from artful cultural conquest.

My accompanying illustration draws from the latter. Inspired by the iconic imagery of the bullfight, with its token imposing beast and its matadors’ colorful tools, I chose to engage further with the symbolism of Spanish conquest. A great steer lit red by the stormy, angry sky rises from the Pacific, an Andean skyline in the sunlight beyond. Before the bull approaches a ship of conquistadors, its crimson sails conjuring the color cows allegedly cannot stand (in reality, as we all likely know, bovines are colorblind; it is the swift motion of the cape that sets them off during fights). Comparatively meek, the Spanish vessel seeks to tackle the looming, primitive beast by the might of its proud culture. This calculation and cleverness is, of course, all a ruse: Spanish colonial might came not from supremacy, but immorality, dishonor, and, most pertinently, disease. The bull of South-Central America could be as powerful and proud as it liked; in the end, it stood no chance against the side effects of inquisition by a culture with poor hygiene, selfish ideals, and longtime expertise in a lack of compassion.

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I apologize for spots of shoddy formatting in these essays; while I adore a good footnote, Tumblr does not, and thus I’ve had to find ways to speedily convert them in cross-posting. 

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[5/2021 - Cock: Essays and Illustrations on Attention, Accessibility, and Deep Play] Cock Crazy

Sometime around middle school, I remember a kind of diss on fans of professional sports--namely American football--circulating the online and in-person circles I frequented: generally those that glowered down their noses at all things mainstream, all while hypocritically enjoying equally exploitative counterculture (the Twilight and Hunger Games novels, respectively, come to mind). Preying on the toxic hypermasculinity and resulting compulsory homophobia of heterosexual, cisgender male peers, we burned them thusly: what could possibly be less heterosexual than beefy men in tights tackling each other into the mud?

Looking back on it, our own modified homophobia was equally insidious, if better disguised--implying homosexuality denotes an opposition to masculinity. But anthropology has long acknowledged that there is something to be said for the intimacy of homosociality--that is, social bonds between members of the same sex within a species, often defined as the “mechanism and social dynamic that explains the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity.” [Hammarén, Nils, and Thomas Johansson. “Homosociality: In Between Power and Intimacy.” SAGE Open, vol. 4, no. 1, 2014, p. 215824401351805., doi:10.1177/2158244013518057.] Per the Geertzian deep play, every aspect of sport indicates subtextual cultural values; American Artist Barbara Kruger conjures the persistence of sport in an untitled collage piece that features the phrase “you construct intricate rituals that allow you to touch the skin of other men.” [Kruger, Barbara. Untitled. Boston, MA, 1981.24] Homoeroticism feels inevitable in patriarchal society, even more so in those that so value athletics. But Clifford Geertz’s cockfights--which he readily offers up as symbolic of Balinese culture, even if his focus is the monetary gambling aspect--introduce a degree of separation; the interactions that make up the sport of cockfighting do not occur between human participants, but the game birds they raise and preen in preparation for bloody combat. But cockfighting as a sport is unique in its ability to retain a bona fide homoeroticism despite limited interactions between the men who partake: after all, its players’ identification with their game birds serve a multilingual sexual innuendo that is not lost on those who spectate.

“To anyone who has been in Bali any length of time, the deep psychological identification of Balinese men with their cocks is unmistakable. The double entendre here is deliberate,” Geertz notes. “It works in exactly the same way in Balinese as it does in English, even to producing the same tired jokes, strained puns, and uninventive obscenities” (Geertz 60). The homoeroticism--granted, cisnormative--of a sport centered around an obsession with a facsimile of male genitalia need not be mentioned, and yet there it is. Even the Balinese folk Geertz interacts with on the daily during his visit are unabashed in their awareness: “‘I am cock crazy,’ my landlord... used to moan as he went to move another cage, give another bath, or conduct another feeding. ‘We’re all cock crazy.’” Granted, “the intimacy of men with their cocks is more than metaphorical”; Balinese cockfighters fawn over their game birds as one would a purebred show dog, “grooming them, feeding them, trying them out against one another, or just gazing at them with a mixture of rapt admiration and dreamy self-absorption” (Geertz 61). To me the closest parallel is something of a mix between pet ownership and, perhaps, car ownership--it simply doesn’t align that a proud bird keeper would put their animal as readily into battle as they would a ceremonial bath of herbs and flowers. The parallel to vehicular obsession manifests here; loving protectiveness is replaced by a somewhat sadistic desire to test the limits of one’s prized machine (organic or otherwise). The more conspicuous aspects of the metaphor even carry over in consideration of the generally American stereotype that men driving massive, boisterous gas-guzzlers are compensating for, say, the size and performance of a certain appendage. High-performance roosters and roadsters alike represent the traditionally masculine man’s adherence to the very masculinity they and their society value, as well as success within that oft-toxic system.

So there we have a fairly straightforward metaphor: Balinese men obsess over and identify with their literal, avian cocks, putting them in competition with those of their fellow man as symbolism for precious masculinity and male dominance. But Geertz introduces another layer of complexity to this seemingly simplistic simile of Balinese culture: the animal aspect. “Although it is true that cocks are symbolic expressions or magnifications of their owner’s self... they are also expressions--and rather more immediate ones--of what the Balinese regard as the direct inversion, aesthetically, morally, and metaphysically, of human status: animality,” he explains. Geertz goes on to cite the Balinese dislike for animals and what they consider to be animalistic behavior: infants are discouraged from crawling on their hands and knees; beastiality is punished much more violently than incest. Defecation and eating alike are considered shameful and obscene, and demand utter privacy and haste in their practices; non-livestock animals like stray dogs are treated cruelly and violently. There is nothing quite like this in the Western world--vermin like rats and pigeons are looked upon with either mild distaste or utter neutrality (and there are, of course, their rare defenders--I rather like pigeons myself); livestock undergoes mistreatment in industrial operations but is at least vocally respected for its resources and complacency in aiding human growth and health. And only society’s greatest degenerates would ever harm a mammalian housepet, publicly or privately. Animal rights activists even draw ire here and there for their apparent lack of concern for human rights violations when animals--most often dogs--inspire so much more universal empathy. In reading about the Balinese dislike for animal nature in combination with the homoeroticism of cock-centric sport, I couldn’t help wondering about the potential significance of these subjects in relation to Balinese LGBT legislation. Perhaps the dislike of animal behavior extends to dated conceptions of sodomy, I thought, considering homosexuality is often considered sexual deviance on the level of incest or beastiality in less accepting nations--and we already know how mercilessly the Balinese react to the latter. But, as they so often do, my inherent biases got the better of me: despite recent movements in the larger Indonesia to push for conversion therapy and prioritization of the nuclear family in the past year [Lang, Nico. “Indonesia Proposes Bill to Force LGBTQ People into 'Rehabilitation'.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 2 Mar. 2020, 1:55PM EST, www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/indonesia-proposes-bill-force-lgbtq-people-rehabilitation-n1146861.], Bali itself is considered fairly safe for LGBT vacationers, be they simply a gay couple looking to relax or a more daring voyageur in search of an international gay scene. Like eating, defecating, or even stumbling, it would appear public displays of affection between any kind of couple is considered distasteful, and thus primal: “While homosexuality is accepted, any public display of romance, whether straight or gay, is frowned upon,” notes one travel tip site. [“Tips for Gay and Lesbian Travelers in Bali.” Frommer's, www.frommers.com/destinations/bali/planning-a-trip/tips-for-gay-and-lesbian-travelers.] It would seem the homoeroticism of cockfights is far more neutral an aspect of the sport than the apparent dance with death that is merely identifying oneself with a nonhuman animal: “the Balinese man is identifying not just with his ideal self, or even his penis, but also... with what he most fears, hates, and ambivalence being what it is, is fascinated by--The Powers of Darkness” (Geertz 62). The conclusion to be drawn here, then, in comparison with Western sport and the childish jokes with which I opened this piece: just as in Bali the distinctly more repulsive (and thus thrilling) aspect of recreational homosociality is forgoing one’s humanity, American sport as I criticized it in my youth (and enjoy and partake in it today) embraces the reverse, unquestioningly participating in animal behavior while flirting with the dual fear and fascination of the homoerotic.